KES lose on first day of festival

HOUGHTON - Great display of school boys rugby on the first day of the King Edward festival.

March 24, 2016

Nkululeko Zilibokwe 1 minute read

The first day of the King Edward VII School Rugby festival saw the country’s best rugby schools on display, providing pulsating encounters though out the day.

The festival has a unique family flavour and is considered to be an annual pilgrimage for multitudes of past pupils and friends of the school.

The first game of the day saw St Benedict’s College lose by 17-7 to HS Waterkloof, while local school St David’s Marist Inanda were given a hiding by Kingswood College in another great encounter.

Kingswood showed great skills and pace with the ball as they powered over a defiant St David’s by 43-17.

Kingwood coach Gareth Shaw was delighted with his team’s performance although he admitted that there is still a lot of room for improvement.

“There were a lot of early season errors in that game it was stop start, but to come through as 43-17 winners we will take that,” he said.

Shaw said they the team did very well on certain areas of the game and with the squad that they have they will upset a lot of teams this year.

The home team King Edward suffered a 22-26 defeat at the hands of HS Ben Vorster in the last game of the day. Ben Vorster began the game as the better of the two teams and was quick to get out of the blocks in front on a packed field.

In the 30th minute KES were already trailing by 17-5, but they regain the momentum towards to end of the first stanza and went into the break trailing by 20-17.

The second half saw more of the same with Ben Vorster dominating proceedings and KES playing in patches.

However when Ben Vorster looked to be running away with the game as they led by 26-17, the home team staged a late surge much to the delight of the crowd as they looked to save the game.

KES’s constant pressure was finally rewarded in the last minute of the game when Josh Ribiero dotted down but it was already too late for the men in Red and White.

The first day results: