Saturday saw both the u/14 and u/16 rugby teams of Curro Nelspruit play in the Virsekerbeker quarter finals.
The matches were both played away against Hoërskool Brits.

The u/14 team have had an impressive season so far with only one loss. The match began with the highly motivated home team using their forwards to try and work the ball up to the middle of the field. This approach was thwarted by the committed Curro defenders and the boys from Brits did not seem to have a plan B. Curro soon managed to regain possession and used their skilled backline to put points on the board through flanker Mark Louw and winger Lunga Magagula, with Cilliers van Heerden making the conversions.

After the break Curro increased their tempo of play and the Brits players could not keep up. The Curro forwards were now dominating the collisions and quick service from their scrum half allowed the backs to run onto front foot ball, leaving the Brits defenders behind. Curro scored another four tries in the half with Brits managing a consolidation try in the final minute of the match to hand Curro a 38-5 victory.

Curro march on to Virseker quarter-finals

The u/16 match was a repeat of last year’s Virsekerbeker final which Brits narrowly won 8-7. Curro were missing some key players with some new ones coming into the squad. The first half was another close encounter with Curro fly half Benji Richardson scoring and converting the only try in the half. With 12 penalties against Curro in the half, Brits were successful with two attempts at goal leading to a half-time score of 7-6 to Curro.

The second half was unfortunately a stop-start affair with a penalty being awarded against Curro every one minute and 40 seconds for a match penalty count of 30-3 in the favour of Brits.

This constant break in momentum did not allow Curro to build any phases and they never got past second phase ball. Brits took advantage of this and moved the ball up the field into scoring positions with them scoring a solitary try and an additional penalty to take a controversial 7-14 win.

The Curro u/14 team will play in the semi-final at HTS Tom Naudé in Polokwane. The other u/14 semi-final also sees two Puma sides play one another, namely Hoërskool Standerton and Hoërskool Kanonkop.

Curro point scorers:
u/14:
• Tries: Mark Louw (2), Lunga Magagula (2), Hermanus Robbertze, Taku Taderera
• Conversions: Cilliers van Heerden (2), Musa Ngwenya (2)
u/16:
• Tries: Benji Richardson
• Conversions: Benji Richardson.