Curro rugby teams stumble at last hurdle
Curro Nelspruit's u/15 rugby team were not able to defend their Virsekerbeker for medium schools title.
The team travelled to Pretoria on Saturday to face Hoërskool Brits in the finals, played at LC de Villiers in Pretoria.
Captain Udo Cilliers and his team lost seven points to eight.
The u/14s were up against Hoërskool Vryburg in the first match of the day. Vryburg took the lead in the final seconds to win the encounter 7-10.
The u/15s were playing a very physical Brits team and could not find their rhythm in the match. Brits played good running rugby that tested Curro’s defence, scoring a well-worked try in the first half.
Curro had their chances, but earlier in the match they had too many handling errors that negated any scoring opportunities. The half-time score was 8-0 to Brits.
After the break Curro came out with renewed vigour and just when it looked like they would score, their handling let them down. After some dogged defence, Curro finally scored with two minutes to play.
Centre Emmanuel Bhiya did not wait for the kicking tee and successfully converted the drop goal with a minute left.
Curro retained possession from the kick-off, but were unfortunately penalised for falling over at the ruck and the Brits team took the quick tap and kicked out to take the win.
The u/14 match started off in windy conditions against Vryburg, which affected the continuity of the match. Curro had the majority of the possession and territory in the first half and had multiple scoring opportunities that they could not convert into points due to unforced errors.
The dangerous Curro backline did not gel on the day and passes were not finding the support runners. After multiple phases, flyhalf Christopher Sjöblom burst through two defenders to score the solitary try.
Vryburg had very little of the ball in the half and remained scoreless with the half-time score 7-0 to Curro.
In the second half Vryburg fought hard at the breakdown to gain more possession. They used this possession to their advantage and their outside centre ran a good line to eventually score. For the rest of the half Curro again dominated, but could not convert this into points, with an unusually high error rate.
Going into the last minute of the match Curro still held their narrow 7-5 lead. Unfortunately from the last scrum there was some obstruction and the ball was turned over to Vryburg. From the resulting penalty, their forwards took the ball to the line, with their scrum half diving over on the blind side.
