TRYING TIMES ON TOP OF AGENDA
Flying wing wonders are right on top of their game
IN A competition in which last year’s top try-scorer was the iCollege Pumas’ Frankie Herne – a hooker – it is probably understandable that the pace-setters in that regard in the early stages of the SuperSport Rugby Challenge have been wingers intent on setting the record straight.
Top of that group is Tafel Lager Griquas winger Enver Brandt, whose six tries (from two hat-tricks, nogal) from his team’s opening two wins in the Central Pool lead the way after two rounds and are already exactly two-thirds of the way to Herne’s total from nine games.
Brandt’s two hat-tricks are part of seven from the opening two rounds alone, the others having been scored by fellow wingers.
They are Charles Mayeza (Boland Cavaliers) and Duncan Saal (Western Province); centre Tertius Kruger (Free State XV); Griquas flanker Sias Koen; with Griffons hooker Anrich Alberts doing his bit to preserve Herne’s honour.
To gain a sense of the heavy scoring early on in the Rugby Challenge – and defence coaches can look away now – no less than five hat-tricks were scored in the second round alone, one of them in the Griffons’ losing effort.
The early free-scoring from Brandt is a good upturn of fortunes for the identical twin (brother Alvin, a wing, also plays for Griquas) from Eeste Rivier in Cape Town, who couldn’t buy a place in the starting line-up last year because he shared a position with team captain AJ Coetzen.
If the defences of the teams he is likely to encounter in future think the scoring in hat-tricks is a fluke, they should be warned that once the 26year-old is given a full game to play in he invariably ends up scoring a lot – just ask last year’s EP Elephants team, who conceded four tries to him.
The other two wingers, led by 22year-old Saal – whose hat-trick against the Border Bulldogs this past weekend was preceded by another two against Eastern Province – aren’t as well-known to the Rugby Challenge faithful as Brandt.
Saal, a Bachelor of Education student at Stellenbosch University and this year’s Varsity Cup winner with the Maties, looks like he is starting to realise the potential realised from when he was voted Western Province’s most promising U19 in 2015.
Mayeza has been around the block, having played Vodacom Cup rugby for the Sharks XV.
But the 27-year-old winger seems to have found a home with Randall Modiba’s men in recent years, just as Kruger, who played for the Griquas last year is at home in Bloemfontein.
Koen and Alberts are the two forwards doing their bit to keep the tryscoring title with the forwards, probably one rolling maul try at a time.