Secunda Rugby keeps Vereeniging at bay

Secunda Digi Mag Rugby Club managed to secure a win over Vereeniging this past Saturday.

Secunda Digi Mag Rugby Club played hosts to Vereeniging Rugby Club on Saturday and managed to secure wins for both the Second Team and the First Team.

The final scores were:

• Seconds 66-7
• First team 22-17

The weather threatened to have the final say in the main event as thunder and lightning strikes kept the players off the field for nearly an hour. Safety is paramount with lightning.

Rain fell and made the playing conditions a little bit more difficult.

It is fortunate that the field was not as wet as the previous Friday when two district U/20 teams played.

The teams both started with eagerness to have some game time but the eagerness proved difficult for the Secunda team. A penalty close to the poles made it easy for the visitors (Vereeniging) to put points on the board.

Another quick penalty was not converted by Vereeniging though.

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Secunda managed to stack up the points very quickly, securing a 22-10 lead early on. Poor discipline nearly had disastrous effects as the visitors kept attacking clawing their way to a close 17 points to Secunda’s 22. Secunda Digi Mag Rugby Club did not score any points in the second half.

The visitors were awarded two penalty tries!

The main culprits were the scrums as the front row were scrumming upwards and not forward. The visitors’ Loosehead prop managed to scrum inwards and up also resulting in Secunda’s error but was unfortunately not seen by the referee. (No critic to the referee intended)

The lineouts went fairly well as both teams contended the lineouts vigorously. There were some mistakes made by both teams, but no team really proved to be very dominant in the lineouts.

The backlines of both teams took every opportunity to attack. The ball-handling skills were not as good as one would expect as several knocks and handling errors were made.

Although it would be easy to criticize the teams for the mistakes they made, it is important to note that it is the beginning of the season and that the skills displayed during the game were good and exciting.

The defences of Secunda proved again to be of a high standard and the home team restricted the visitors to scoring nearly no point of their own.

The only few areas of slight concern would be discipline, (and Secunda is known for good discipline,) and handling skills.

Secunda Digi Mag Rugby Club will once again prove what quality rugby they can produce and we are all looking forward to a good year of rugby.