Category: Rugby

Last week Thursday our u13A rugby team travelled to East London to attend the ninth annual Grens Sport Festival. Over the course of the tour our boys played three matches that served as a preparation for a lengthy and challenging rugby season.

Day 1 – Union U13A vs Grens U13A lost 5 -15

Day 2 – Union U13A vs Fort Beaufort won 46 – 15

Day 3 – Union U13A vs Gonubie U13A lost 14 – 27

Our boys played well in all three matches, sticking to our structure and putting in tremendous defensive performances against strong opposition.

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.

On Saturday 23rd February the mighty “Whites” set off for Somerset East to play in the Gill Sports Day. Our opponents on the day was Hoërskool Cillié from Port Elizabeth, who are known for being physical up front and elusive at the back. The boys prepared really well in the week as we knew this would be a tough contest.  The fixture was scheduled for 14:00 in very hot conditions.

We started the game very well putting a number of phases together, showing maturity as we held on to the ball and did not panic. After fourteen minutes of continuous attack Cillie’s defenses were finally breached by Cleathon Koeberg who crossed over the line with great strength and body positioning. The conversion was unsuccessful. We continued to apply loads of pressure as we dominated possession and territory for most of the game. Ten minutes after scoring our first try, Jaden Brotherton burst through the defensive line and evaded seven Cillié players before linking up with Brett Amsterdam who ran a good support line to give off the final pass to Bladen Jacobs who dotted down for an amazing team try. The conversion was unsuccessful and we went into the break 10-0 up.

The second half was very similar to the first in the sense that we dominated possession and territory. We attacked wave after wave, but unfortunately didnt convert all the opportunities we had into points. Fifteen minutes into the second half, we were awarded a penalty try for cynical play by Cillié who caught the ball in an offside position as we were about to score. This increased our score to 17-0 which ended up being the final result.

Every player in the squad got some game time which is the purpose of pre-season fixtures. All in all the boys delivered a decent performance in our first game of the season.