The u16A team finished the 1st half of the season in style beating a determined Wynberg side 25 – 5 on the memorial B field on Thursday 16 June.
The expected rain did not materialise for our match so the game, although muddy underfoot, was largely played as normal with the ball being thrown around quite a bit providing an entertaining spectacle for the small crowd that gathered to watch.
SACS Started the game well, winning Wynberg’s kick off and almost scoring had it not been for a knock on. This was to set the tone for the rest of the match where SACS made far better use of their ball than Wynberg. SACS scored first through wing Gordon Jooste who collected a loose ball to score in the corner. SACS next scored a scintillating try after hooker Struan Murray came from superb depth and broke a tackle before offloading to Lock Brentyn Delport, who in turn offloaded to 8th man Devon Barnard who stepped 2 would-be defenders to score under the poles. Zubair Ajam converted adding to a previous penalty to make the score 15 nil in SACS’s favour at half time.
The 2nd half was characterised by poor discipline from SACS which gave the initiative to Wynberg who then dominated possession. Wynberg pushed hard on SACS’s line for quite some time, being repelled time and again by our superb defence. Wynberg scored after an ill judged box kick by our scrumhalf Keagan Wheeler, taken far too close to our line which was then charged down and a Wynberg player pounced on the ball to score an unconverted try.
SACS messed up a number of potential try scoring opportunities through poor hands and option taking, but left the best to last, when wing Jason Labuschagne was put into space by quick hands from Struan Murray and Joel MacQuene. Jason beat a number of defenders to give the final try scoring pass to Flank Justin Joubert who crashed over in style. Zubair added the extras to finish the game.
The u16A team can be proud of beating Wynberg and Bishops, but it must be noted that this team has let a number of games slip through their hands this 1sthalf of the season. Jeppe, Boland Landbou and Grey P.E are games that could have been victories had the boys not gone to sleep and allowed the game to slip through their fingers. They lacked the killer instinct at times which allowed teams to finish us off instead. Finishing is the biggest problem this team has had this year, the amount of tries that went a-begging is frightening and considering these lost opportunities contributed to the losses it is even more frustrating. However on the flip side I would much rather have a team that is creating the opportunities and then learning how to finish rather than how to create! This is an area we have worked hard on and will continue to do so next term. For once this team get that right, they will be producing and finishing a top quality brand of Rugby.
So although the team has a 55% win-loss ratio we all know it should be higher, and will work even harder to ensure this goes up for next term as anything resembling mediocrity is not acceptable for this team and for SACS who need to have teams perform and win against the top schools.