Dolphins Rugby – 13 February 2015

This past weekend saw the Dolphins compete in the Nashua South Coast Sevens.

It presented an opportunity for the team to test various combinations ahead of the upcoming season and integrate the new players into the fold.

Twelve players embarked on the trip to Margate early Saturday morning and were faced with Scottburgh in the first game.

Not enough warm up time prior to kick off and an unsurprising lack of cohesion saw Scottburgh win the encounter.

The second pool game was against Amacheche, a local team from the South Coast.

The team started to find their rhythm and ran out winners by four tries to two.

The last pool game saw the Dolphins up against the hosts (and eventual winners of the cup) the South Coast Warriors.

The home side proved too strong, taking the victory and relegating the Ballito based team to the the Bowl division.

The quarter final was against the South Coast Crusaders. By that time the Dolphins had some game time under the belt and hit their straps to win without conceding a point.

The semi final pitted the team up against familiar opposition as they played Amacheche once more.

Having confidence from the previous win they started strongly and quickly scored three unanswered tries in the first half.

The second half was a different story however and after conceding two converted tries the scores were perilously close at 15-14.

Coach James Muter cleverly turned to the bench and brought on fresh legs with the subs combining to turn over possession in Amacheche’s 22m and scoring the winning try on the stroke of full time.

This was however not before one of the Dolphins players (who’s name is withheld to spare some blushes) jubilantly dived over the ‘try line’ only to realise that it was the 5 yard line.

The bowl final was played against Phalaborwa and boy do “they feed them well up there!”.

Credit to our boys as they showed courage in the face of much larger adversaries.

There is no substitute for speed and it was our fleet of foot that prevailed, running in three tries to one.

Although it was not the bowl trophy, it did the team the world of good to secure some silverware, setting a solid platform for the rest of the season.

Oddballs