St Andrew's College went into their own water polo tournament full of confidence, after winning the Vibes Water Polo tournament in East London the previous weekend.
St Andrew's College went into their own water polo tournament full of confidence, after winning the Vibes Water Polo tournament in East London the previous weekend.
Good weather, big crowds, and some top-quality water polo made the St Andrew’s Shield tournament a great success.
The tournament was split into the Shield and Plate events, with eight teams contesting the main Shield event and 12 sides making up the Plate event.
St Andrew's and Kingswood were the two local sides in the Shield, together with St David's Marist Inanda (Johannesburg), Reddam House (Cape Town), Clifton School (Durban), Grey High School, Pearson High School (both Port Elizabeth) and Selborne College (East London).
The three top teams from outside the province were Clifton, St David's and former tournament winners Reddam.
All the Shield and some of the Plate events were played at the St Andrew's pool. Most of the Plate matches were played at the DSG indoor swimming pool.
The Shield was keenly contested, with all eight sides showing they had the potential to win the tournament. Top national referees, Daniel Ramage and Paul Goosen were among those officiating.
The St Andrew's first team missed several opportunities in winning their opening pool game against Selborne 7–5. Against Clifton, they were unable to find the target with a number of shots on goal, and went down 8-4.
However, they lifted their game in the final pool match to beat St David’s 14–3, to qualify for the quarter-finals.
In the quarter-finals on Sunday morning, St Andrew's beat Pearson convincingly 13–3, to advance to a semi-final against Reddam.
Buoyed by outstanding support from the home crowd, St Andrew's led 4–2 heading into the final chukka, but Reddam took advantage of their opportunities in the final chukka to win 5–4 and qualify for the final.
In the other semi-final, Grey PE produced an outstanding performance to beat Clifton 12–10. St Andrew's lost to Clifton in the play-off for third place, losing 10–4, while Reddam outplayed Grey in the final.
They won the St Andrew’s Shield for the third time with an 8–4 victory. St Andrew's was awarded the Spirit of the Game trophy thanks to the manner in which they conducted themselves and their sportsmanship throughout the tournament.
The tournament side selected at the conclusion of the tournament included two St Andrew's players: Joey Slack and Scott Dormehl.
Kingswood finished in eighth position.
They lost their first match 4-14 to Grey PE, before losing 5-14 to Reddam. They lost their final group match 6-7 to Pearson.
In the seventh- and eighth-place play-offs they lost 4-5 to St David's. The St Andrew's second, third and fourth teams all competed in the Plate competition.
The third and fourth teams gave of their best against first teams from other schools, finishing eighth and 12th respectively.
The St Andrew's second team won all of their pool games, including matches against the first teams of Alexander Road, Port Rex, and Hudson Park, to qualify directly for the semi-finals.
They met Hudson Park again in the semi-finals, this time losing a close encounter 5–4. In their play-off against Grey seconds, they drew 5–5 to finish in a tie for 3rd place.
Stirling beat Hudson Park 4–2 in the Plate final.
Graeme College finished 11th in the Plate after losing 0-14 to Grey, 2-4 to Woodridge, 3-11 to Stirling and 2-16 to Selborne seconds.
Graeme beat St Andrew's fourths in the 11th-place play-off.
