The Standard Bank Easter schools rugby festivals invariably leads, on day one anyway, to some lopsided scorelines and Thursday’s opening fixtures were no different this year.
This is because at each of the three tournaments – at St Stithians, St John’s and King Edward school – there are generally two tiers of teams playing, one clearly stronger than the other, and with the unwritten rules that govern the arranging of the fixtures, there have to be “cross-pool” games at some stage of the weekend.
Those restrictionsprevent the repetition of meetings down the years, and the organisers try to avoid matching up schools that will play each other anyway at some stage of the season. So, day one of the 2016 Easter festival weekend was characterised by some pretty convincing victories.
There were four big wins at the St John’s festival where there are four “top 10” schools in action, and all had runaway victories. Paarl Boys’ High were given some stiff opposition by the Golden Lions Invitation team to start off with, but got into their stride in the second half to win 54-0; Monument were way too strong for Italian visitors Viadana, winning 57-0; Paul Roos Gimnasium were impressive in beating Hilton 67-6; and Affies, after conceding the first try of the game to Parktown, ran out 49-7 winners. Across at St Stithians, St Alban’s kicked off with a convincing 35-0 win over Clifton College, while Grahamstown’s St Andrew’s College beat Pretoria Boys’ High 30-8.
The sides were generally better matched at the King Edward festival, but there were still two big wins: Kingswood beat St David’s Marist 43-17 and Queens College were 36-8 winners over Northwood Boys’ High.
It wasn’t all one-sided, and there were a number of exciting clashes across the three events as well. At King Edward, the final game of the day between the hosts and Tzaneen’s Hoërskool Ben Vorster, was a humdinger, with the hosts squandering a number of opportunities before going down 26-22. The Jeppe v Eldoraigne game was also a thriller.
Eldoraigne went ahead early on before the Jeppe backs hit their straps in the second half to win 26-18, although the margin could have been much bigger.
St Stithians dug deep at their festival to beat Graeme College 17-16, while the Michaelhouse v Wynberg Boys’ High clash was a tryfest that ended 31-all.
The pick of today’s action at St John’s will be the 2.45pm clash between Paul Roos and Monument; at KES, the Jeppe v Waterkloof match-up at 1.30pm will be interesting; while at St Stithians, Grey High play Bishops at 12.15pm
Saturday Star