Kearsney beat George Campbell
Kearsney had to dig deep to beat George Campbell, this after building up a healthy three-try 14-point lead inside of the opening 15 minutes of their game on Botha's Hill. Campbell then gradually chipped away at this deficit, eventually going down by 17-12, following their spirited comeback.
The match got off to the best possible start for the home team. They collected the ball from their own shallow kick-off, advanced it forward through a series of quickly recycled phases and before George Campbell could get a touch, lock Ayron Schramm had manoeuvred his way passed the last defenders to score near the left-hand corner.
It stayed at 5-0 after the difficult conversion was missed.
Campbell's response was almost immediate.
A heel against the head after a good shove served as the launch pad for an excellent passage of play by the visitors. They concluded the spell by settling for three points from the boot of Lindani Mdlalose, after a Kearsney player was penalised and yellow carded.
The man down did little to stem Kearsney's tide. They soon cracked on the pressure again.
The speed at which Kearsney moved the attack forward combined with the precision of their passing and quick hands was a sight to behold. Amongst their players making the biggest impact were the colossal du Preez brothers, Daniel and Jean-Luc. Apart from show incredible strength in the contact and have superb ball-handling skills, the twins showed the willingness to work hard in all aspects of play.
It was not long before the Campbell defence out wide was again exposed. This time quick-ball provided Kearsney's Sandile Khubeka with the chance to go one-one with his opponent in midfield. Once he had shrugged off the tackle and opened up a hole, yet another near perfect floated pass had Isolethu Ngidi raced onto the ball and swan-diving over in the left corner.
The unconverted try placed Kearsney into a 10-3 lead.
Kearsney followed it up with more of the same kind of fluent high quality rugby and gained a foothold in the thirteenth minute thanks to what looked like a well-executed set move.
A ball thrown to the back of the line-out, went swiftly off the top and was channeled left towards midfield, again at a pace that Campbell struggled to match. Almost as rapidly as it arrived at the first breakdown point, the ball was worked back right to its original starting point. Here on the outside Kearsney's outstanding hooker Biaggo Pelliccia still had bit to do to get over the try-line but made light work of getting passed the last defender, when he shaped inside and then exploded past on the outside.
Under-16 flyhalf Tristan Tedder who had some good touches on the ball and displayed composure levels of an older player at a few crucial stages in the match, landed his only kick, taken from yet another difficult angle, to extend Kearsney's lead to 17-3.
At that stage one sensed that the floodgates were about to open in what was building up to be a rather one-sided contest.
However a glimpse at the Campbell players congregated around their captain behind their posts for the third time in quick succession revealed body languages of a team that were about to do anything except give up the challenge.
And that is exactly what happened. Campbell emerged from the huddle and came out fighting. At first it appeared to just be for pride. However as the game wore on Campbell slowly rebuilt and grew increasingly influential.
It's not quite certain where things started to go wrong for Kearsney. Perhaps they took their foot off the pedal or underestimated Campbell's determination to get back into the match. The inclement may have had something to do with it as well. What was clear was that the home team was slowly but surely starting to run out of fresh ideas. As Kearsney became more complacent, their tactics appeared to change. The speed, top drawer handling and expansive attacking game that had been so deadly was replaced to a large extent by one-dimensional bashing up the middle.
As soon as this started, the game played straight into the hands of Campbell, whose defence nearer the ruck rates as one of their biggest assets.
Inspired by their two very experienced loose forwards Richard van der Westhuizen and Sibulele Nanto, Campbell closed down spaces quicker, directed their tackles a little lower and broke up Kearsney's continuity in the process.
Campbell was also a lot happier to kick the ball up-field or hoist into the air, as opposed to Kearsney's style of carrying it.
This strategy paid dividends for Campbell, particularly in the second half once the heaven's opened and the wind picked up from behind the visitors. They enjoyed a much larger share of the territorial advantage in this half with their boys looking a lot more comfortable under the highball, including showing good skills to pluck a few out of the sky.
Mondi Nkosi and Mdlalose had pleasing games and Devon Koekemoer weighed in with a few useful box kicks.
Mdlalose was unlucky not to take advantage of two opportunities from long box kicks, which had the potential to be turned into points, towards the latter part of the first half. His penalty before half-time did reduce Kearsney's lead to 17-6 at the break though.
Mdlalose then followed this up with two more penalties from close range in the second half to bring Campbell to within five points of Kearsney's score.
Kearsney were looking rattled and not well organised at the back at times.
When the visitors went in search of an equalising try at around about the 25-minute mark, they came agonisingly close.
Much credit must also go to Kearsney's defence for being able to consolidate on the several occasions when they were placed on the back-foot during the game.
Despite being beaten 6-0 and looking the second best for much of the second half, Kearsney hung in there to record a 17-12 win.
Some of the moves pulled off by Kearsney in the opening stages were sublime especially considering how early in the season it still is. Other areas will however have to be given special attention on the training ground this week.
George Campbell, as disappointing as they were with the loss, has every right to be proud of their achievement. Despite being the only KwaZulu-Natal top tier rugby school without a boarding establishment, they have proven to be very competitive in 2012 and gained a lot of respect from the Kearsney crowd on this day.
The teams:
Kearsney: 15 J De Bruin, 14 J Bowman, 13 S Kubeka, 12 T Smith, 11 I Ngidi, 10 T Tedder, 9 M Reece-Edwards, 8 G Francis, 7 J du Preez, 6 T Harwood, 5 D du Preez, 4 A Schramm, 3 M Moloi, 2 B Pelliccia, 1 J Deighton (captain).
George Campbell: 15 L Mazibuko, 14 S Ntombela, 13 L Ndimande, 12 J Joubert, 11 L Mdlalose, 10 M Nkosi, 9 D Koekemoer, 8 S Nanto, 7 D Booysen,6 R van der Westhuizen (captain), 5 K Mtshali, 4 J Smal, 3 L Thwala, 2 T Barnard, 1 R Mostert.
By Beet