Varsity Cup preview - Semifinals
FNB UCT and FNB Pukke will go at it first on Monday, at 4.45pm, with the Men from Potchefstroom travelling down to the Cape to take on UCT on their home ground – as they did in last year’s semifinals.
Of course, the Maties-Tukkies semifinal – at 6.45pm – is also a repeat of last year’s dramatic Last Four clash, with this year’s play-offs having something of a Groundhog Day feel to it.
“I think it does prove that these are the top four university teams in the country, but at the same time I thought Shimlas found their feet towards the end of the tournament and I think UJ were also running into some form (by the end),” Maties coach Chean Roux told varsitycup.co.za.
“It has something of a déjà vu feeling to it,” he admitted, “but if things turn out exactly the same as last year, then that means UCT will end up winning the final as we ended second on the log last year, before beating UCT in the final!
“I’m sure Dobbo (John Dobson, UCT coach) and Fleckie (Robbie Fleck) will be hoping that pans out, but the nice thing about being in the semi’s yet again means I know what to expect and so do my players.”
Roux’s Maties side went down 23-25 to the selfsame Tukkies outfit last Monday – amazingly, UCT also lost their final-round fixture to Pukke – but the Stellenbosch mentor was not worried by that defeat.
“It would’ve been great to end the season unbeaten, but I’d much rather lose a meaningless league game than go into the play-offs unbeaten and lose one of those matches,” he said.
“I told the guys after the loss to Tukkies on Monday, ‘This is what failure feels like… Let’s make sure we don’t have that same feeling next week’.”
UCT head coach John Dobson had a similar mindset to Roux when asked about the Ikey Tigers’ 13-17 loss to a fired-up Pukke team last Monday – a result which meant that the Maties would top the log regardless of their result against Tukkies later in the day.
“I think psychologically it was good to lose as complacency would have been a threat had we won in Potch – a team as good as Pukke would punish us for any form of complacency,” Dobson told varsitycup.co.za.
“We know we are in for a massive battle on Monday evening, but hopefully we can play more rugby (this time),” added the canny Ikeys coach.
“We have made a few structural adjustments, that should help. They will come at us hard in the scrums, where we battled last week after Shane (Meier) got injured, but I am sure Paul (Day, scrum coach) has fixed it.”
* If any of the semifinal matches end in a draw after regulation time, extra-time will be played. If the UCT-Pukke match ends in a draw, the second semifinal in Stellenbosch will thus start a few minutes later.
Extra-time regulations:
– Twenty minutes of extra-time will be played – ten minutes each half, with one minute for half-time in between.
– If the scores are still equal at the conclusion of extra-time, a ‘kick-out’ will be held.
– In the ‘kick-out’, each team chooses five players to place-kick from a designated point on the field as instructed by the Tournament Director, or referee. If the scores are still equal at that point; the kicks will then be done on a sudden-death basis.
– These sudden-death kicks must be taken by other players than the five that have already kicked. Thus a player can kick one kick only in the ‘kick-out’.
Semifinals schedule:
Monday, March 23:
FNB UCT v FNB Pukke, Groote Schuur Fields, Cape Town – 4.45pm (TV)
FNB Maties v FNB Tuks, Danie Craven Stadium, Stellenbosch – 6.45pm (TV)
The semifinal teams:
(Click on the team names below.)
FNB UCT v FNB Pukke
FNB Maties v FNB Tuks
