St Andrew’s add to Vides victories

ST ANDREW’S College were the toast of the 2018 Vides water polo tournament as they claimed a pulsating 8-5 win over Grey High School in an exciting final at Selborne College on Saturday evening.

The Grahamstown side have been the most dominant team in the Vides over the last decade, winning it five times, four of them in the last six editions.

This year, however, they came up against the favourites who were the only unbeaten team going into the final, but managed to put in a massive late charge to claim a brilliant win.

“I am very happy for the guys, I think they have worked extremely hard for this,” St Andrews coach David Mackenzie said.

“We really worked on our fitness. We knew in a format like this with four seven-minute chukkas, if we were fit enough we could take the game.

“So we just held on until the fourth chukka and then were able to kick them and score four goals in one chukka.”

St Andrews were shocked on the first day against Glenwood, going down 3-2 in the pool stages, which meant they had to play a qualifier to make the quarterfinals.

They duly dispatched Northwood 6-4 on Friday night, before accounting for Pearson 7-1 in the quarters and just edging Paul Roos 5-4 in the semis, then saving their best performance for last against massive rivals Grey.

“I think we didn’t have a good game against Glenwood,” Mackenzie admitted. “But when push came to shove the boys really knew what they were doing and came back superbly on the final day.”

The third/fourth-place playoff saw Paul Roos beat Glenwood 5-2, while hosts and one of the favourites Selborne had to settle for fifth place after losing in a penalty shootout in the quarters against Paul Roos.