UHS 1st XV – Grens Festival 2019
On Thursday 28 February, Union High’s mighty “Whites” travelled to East London to participate in the Grens Festival. Our first opponent was the hosting school Hoërskool Grens. Due to “loadshedding”, our match started 45 minutes before scheduled time. This enforced us to rush through our warm up and didn’t give us much time to settle in.
Grens was first to score as we let the ball bounce off a kick, they seized the opportunity and made us pay for our mistake two minutes into the game. 15 minutes into the game Junior Duba crossed the line, with us converting to make the score 7 all. A blunder by the referee resulted in us trailing once again by 14 points to 7. Khwezi Simon dotted the ball in our in goal area, followed up by Grens picking the ball up and “scoring”. This led to much frustration on our behalf. A few minutes later we gave away a penalty, which Grens converted making the half time score 17-7 in their favour.
The second half was played in an unsportsmanlike manner as Grens were involved in 8 foul play incidents without receiving any cards. Bowen Langmead scored 20 minutes into the second half, which was once again converted by Jaden Brotherton. The final score after a very frustrating, dirty game by the opposition was 36-14 to Grens. We must commend our boys for not getting involved in foul play and off the ball incidents.
On Saturday 02 March, The mighty “Whites” played against Hoërskool Hangklip from Queenstown. The boys were very amped for the encounter as we felt we needed to improve tremendously from our loss on Thursday evening. Union were first to strike as Jaden Brotherton slotted a penalty in 14th minute after dominating the opening phases. 10 minutes later Junior Duba crossed the whitewash, with Jaden converting taking out tally to 10 points. Just before half time we crossed over the line, with Junior scoring his second try of the match. Jaden once again converted to take us into the break 17-0 up.
The second half started with Hangklip scoring after 5 minutes, taking the score to 17-5. With us on attack in the opposition half, Hangklip intercepted a pass and breached our defences to make the score 17-12. After settling down, UHS scored an amazing team try with Bladen Jacobs dotting down in the corner. The conversion was missed and the score was now 22-12 in our favour with 5 minutes to go. We received a penalty with no time left on the clock. Jaden kicked for touch to set us up with a lineout 10 metres out. The mighty “Whites” mauled over in the corner to finish off the game impressively. The final score was 27-12 to Union High.
This weekend was a wonderful learning experience for the boys and has made the team a very close unit. We look forward to a decent season ahead.