Selborne hang on to beat hosts
TOP East London school Selborne held off a spirited effort by the hosts to complete a highly successful Pam Golding Properties Graeme Rugby Day with a hard-earned 20-15 win in Grahamstown on Saturday.
In choosing to play the traditionally strong Selborne in the feature match, Graeme College gave themselves one of the toughest challenges in this annual pipe-opener to the Eastern Cape schools rugby season.
Despite being on the losing end, the Graemians could take some positives from their performance and might even have sneaked an upset win had they managed to convert more penalty kicks.
For their part, Selborne will have received a timely reminder that nothing can be taken for granted, but they will be relatively satisfied with their results in the early stages of the season. Saturday’s victory followed a 24-3 win over East London rivals Hudson Park the previous weekend.
Tournament organiser Nico van der Meulen said it had been another hugely successful festival of schoolboy rugby, with a number of close results meaning there was plenty of interest throughout the programme of fixtures.
“I feel this was the biggest attendance we have ever had at the Graeme Rugby Day and it really was another excellent day in Grahamstown,” he said.
“We had some rain on Friday but took the precaution of placing covers on the field and this helped to keep it dry.
“Fortunately, the weather was fine on Saturday, not too hot and perfect for some entertaining rugby.”
Examples of the closeness of the encounters were the drawn results between Grey High and Marlow (11-11) and Brandwag against Dale (21-21).
Grey and Marlow have always had a ding-dong battle in the Graeme Rugby Day and no doubt the coaches will have learnt something from this encounter as they prepare for next term’s programme.
In two other tight encounters, Framesby shaded Queen’s with the unusual score in modern-day rugby of 6-3, while Pearson will take heart from their performance against Kingswood, despite going down 12-7.
Last year, in their schools league encounter, Kingswood thumped Pearson 55-5 and the PE side will be looking to build on this performance.
There were a few convincing performances on the day. Cambridge opened the day with a solid 23-5 win over Muir and Nico Malan ran rampant against Union High in a 50-18 triumph.
St Andrew’s, who lost to Hudson Park last year, showed good intent by running in several tries to defeat their East London rivals 31-7.