After a memorable Cape Town battle, the u/19 Grey High rugby team will face another enormous challenge on Saturday.
This time they will have home ground advantage against Paul Roos Gymnasium, from Stellenbosch.
It was a nailbiter of note this past Saturday as Grey and Wynberg played to a 10–10 draw.
Grey’s supporters must prepare for more of the same, because previous matches between Grey and Paul Roos have always been closely contested.
This will be the 11th time these teams meet, and Paul Roos leads with six victories to four.
It won’t be easy for Grey to pick themselves up for another tough match, after a truly gutsy effort against Wynberg.
The unbeaten Wynberg is having a wonderful season and Grey started the match as underdogs.
The home side soon found out that Grey was not in Cape Town to look at the mountain, but to play rugby.
Try as they may, Wynberg just could not get through Grey’s solid defence, and it was Grey who surprisingly led 3–0 at half-time.
After Wynberg drew level, they finally got over the try line after 60 minutes of play.
At this stage Grey had huge problems to cover for injured players, and Wynberg must have thought they had another victory in the bag.
Grey had other ideas and fought back with a try. Meyer Prinsloo added the conversion to make it 10–10.
In the last few minutes, Grey had to defend desperately, and when the final whistle went the draw felt like a victory for the visitors.
Framesby, playing at home in Gqeberha, was involved in a try fest against Oakdale, from Riversdale.
Oakdale won 50–33, scoring seven tries to five.Oakdale shocked Framesby with three tries within the first 15 minutes. The Framesby defence was terribly disorganised in this period.
They also lost a forward, sent packing by referee Michael Collier with a red card for punching, in the 19th minute.
All indications were that a huge hiding was on its way. That was precisely what the visitors thought, and they started to lose concentration.
Framesby used this opportunity to get back into the game.
At half-time Oakdale was just eight points in front, leading 29–21, but they still had enough in the tank to seal the deal in the end.
Framesby will be at home again this coming Saturday against Die Brandwag (Kariega).
Brandwag surprised by beating Daniel Pienaar 18–5 in a Tinara Cup match.
Pearson (Gqeberha) beat Muir College (Uitenhage) 43–7 and will now travel to Humansdorp to take on Nico Malan.
Between these matches the Eastern Province High Performance group will have another training session at the Nelson Mandela University this afternoon.
The next set of EP trials, u/18 and u/16, is at Marlow in Nxuba (Cradock) on May 7.
Saturday’s fixtures
- Grey v Paul Roos
- Nico Malan v Pearson
- Framesby v Brandwag
- Despatch v Daniel Pienaar
- Cillie v Andrew Rabie
Results
Pearson 43, Muir 7; Andrew Rabie 21, Gill College 3; DF Malherbe 22, Kirkwood 22; Knysna 33, Victoria Park 28; Wynberg 10, Grey 10; Oakdale 50, Framesby 35.