Queen's lose to St Andrew's
Queen's College delivered, what can best be described as, 'their worst performance of the season' this past Saturday afternoon. The Queenstown team played a gutsy St Andrew's in Grahamstown and lost 31-18.
A trait of the weekend was the outstanding technical display from most of the St Andrew's teams. It was clear from the minute the First XV game kicked off that the time invested in coaching well-drilled technique would pay off handsomely. The St Andrew's First XV was simply too good on the day and quite honestly wanted to win more than their visitors.
St Andrew's opened the scoring in the third minute with a well-taken penalty and added another penalty nine minutes later. Queen’s College flyhalf, Joshua Stander, got Queen’s on the board in the 14th minute with a well-taken penalty. It was fairly even at this stage with the visitors doing most of the playing, but making far too many mistakes and the hosts capitalising on every opportunity afforded to them. St Andrew's would do just that when they capitalised on some poor play to score an unconverted try in the corner. The game ebbed and flowed from one end of the field to the other and Queen’s were never allowed to gain any momentum. Stander added another penalty in the 31st minute and the scores would stay at 11-6 at half-time in favour of the hosts.
The second half started with an absolute bang as St Andrew's went through a purple patch to score, what was best described by a spectator as “some of the best schoolboy tries I have seen in years”. The hosts ran hard, passed well and evaded would-be tacklers with ease. They added 17 unanswered points during this period through three tries and a conversion.
A stunned Queen’s College had no answer, but continued to fight on. They were not accurate enough to make any progress and they simply had no answer for their opponents. They managed to score a converted try with just 10 minutes to play, but the writing was already on the wall. St Andrew's added a penalty to their tally. Queen’s College would have the final say when they scored a well-worked, unconverted try in the corner to give them a total of 18 points, but St Andrew’s 20 minute purple patch would ensure that they were comfortable winners.
The Men from Queenstown will have to pick themselves up quickly as they take on a good Stirling team, at home, this coming weekend.
The marathon fixtures list of four consecutive away games is now over and they will also have to put the disappointment of not being allowed to play Craven Week rugby behind them. This group of players are a special group of young men and are real ambassadors for their school. However, nothing but a quality performance will be expected from them this weekend.
By Hayden Buchholz