Queen’s triumph in intense encounter
Hosts manage to overcome Dale, and Reunion pressure
In an intense and impressive performance, Queen’s College welcomed – and beat – Dale College 29-15 at QC’s 166th Reunion on Saturday before a packed The Rec stadium.
Soon after the 3.30pm game’s start, Dale’s Singatha Rasi scored, along with a successful conversion by Owethu Mpondo, which put them seven points ahead.
But as the pressure mounted to breaking point, Queen’s came out with the victory.
After finding themselves seven points down, Queen’s forced their rivals into a penalty situation.
While Ryan Denston missed one, he made sure with a second penalty opportunity.
Jameel Fleshman’s try raised a huge cheer and brought hope to Queen’s supporters, especially when Denston then sent the ball through the uprights.
Denston went on to effortlessly slot another penalty.
Sinelizwi Deleki tnen scored another unconverted try.
In the second half, Fleshman scored his second try. Mveli Mqulo missed the conversion but made sure of two more penalty kicks to extend the score to 29 for Queens.
Dale’s second try came from Phikolomzi Mtyalela but Mpondo missed the conversion.
Dale’s final points of the game came from a successful penalty kick from Mpondo in the second half, which took
their score to 15. Dale coach Royden Kennedy said: “We were in the game the first couple of minutes, but a couple
of mistakes were made which led to Queen’s scoring. But they were not clinical, were not where they needed to be, and kept on losing possession and dropping the ball,” he said.
“It was silly mistakes that cost us the game. I will need to look at the video and see where we can rectify, limit our mistakes and be much better.
“If we had held, maintained and just kept being consistent, we would have had a different result.
“Well done to Queen’s, they were certainly the better team, they were certainly sticking to their plan and as a result got the win.”
Clinton Löest, Queen’s head coach and head of sport, said: “The Reunion is always a high-pressure game so it was just about trying to keep the boys calm, especially early on and when those two tries were scored against us.
“It showed very good character from our boys to make sure they didn’t lose their heads, kept focus on the process and got us through the game.
“The team has shown a lot of maturity. I think the fact that we beat Selbourne last week in East London obviously gave the boys confidence in the way we played and because of that it helped with the character we showed in the game to win today.”
While there were too many errors, the Reunion pressure added to this.
“That is something we have to obviously work on.
“We spoke about it before the game but the boys are still young and some are inexperienced, so those errors do come.”