Kingswood College, Graeme College and St Andrew’s College first rugby teams enjoyed good wins on Saturday.
Kingswood College, Graeme College and St Andrew’s College first rugby teams enjoyed good wins on Saturday.
Graeme beat Mary Waters 34-7, while St Andrew’s beat Marlow 21-13. At City Lords, Kingswood College went up against Winterberg Agricultural High School on a perfect day for running rugby.
Winterberg opened the scoring via a Hayden Kurten penalty but some fierce counter rucking by the Kingswood forwards lead to a penalty for a ruck infringement, which was converted by fullback Scot van Breda to level the scores at three all.
Kingswood started dominating the breakdowns and this led to a penalty for not rolling away, which was converted by Van Breda to push the score to 6-3.
Even though Winterberg had the smaller pack, they looked solid with the ball hand, but were met by some solid tackling from Kingswood, who were looking to run the ball from deep in their half at any opportunity, with centres Chris Keets and John Hale looking dangerous.
The home side dominated possession, but were not able to convert to points, but then the pressure when the visitors conceded another breakdown penalty was kicked to touch.
From there the home side secured the lineout and scored from the ensuing maul, flanker Chris Roberts scoring the first of his two tries.
The visitors then started to see more of the ball and pinned the home side in their half due to excellent tactical kicking by flyhalf Kurten.
The visitors applied pressure to the Kingswood line, but their defence stood firm. Kingswood’s loosehead prop Matthew Liesenberg was shown the yellow card for repeated ruck infringements.
The visitors could not take advantage of their numerical advantage and coughed up possession, from where the hosts set up a flowing move which was rounded off by 8th man Chad Matthews, from where Van Breda converted to leave the score 18-3 at halftime.
The second half started in the same fashion of the first half where Kurten landed a penalty to pull back the score to 18-6.
Then for the next while the home side took control of the game and gave the visitors nothing to work with, as Winterberg stood firm and repelled countless Kingswood attacks.
The hosts then became over eager, and in some instances knocked the ball on in promising try scoring positions.
Winterberg were eventually stretched and fullback Van Breda broke through and scored a try which he then converted to push the score to 23-6.
The home side attacking intent then came through with the forwards punching holes in the tiring Winterberg defence and stretching them out wide.
Further tries were added by Roberts, flyhalf Steve Hansel and left wing David Kombe to push the score to 42-6.
To their credit, Winterberg did not give in and with two further forays forward, accrued two penalties which were converted by Kurten to push the score to 42-12.
The home side could be satisfied with their margin of victory, but they could show more patience in execution, while the visitors could hold their heads high with a sterling defensive effort.
Kingswood tries-Chris Roberts: 2, Chad Matthews, Scot van Breda, Steven Hansel, David Kombe. Conversions- Van Breda: 4 Penalties- Van Breda 2 Winterberg penalties- Hayden Kurten: 4
