Fighting off game time rust after a lay-off of nearly a month of competitive game time, Sentraal went down 54-22 against South Coast Warriors in a Castle Murray Cup knock-out match played in Dundee on a chilly Saturday afternoon.
The local team earned kudos as they simply never gave up despite the Port Shepstone lads continued attacks. Sentraal actually led early in the first half thanks to speedster, Charles Dube, with Gert Aucamp scoring another one after a bit of a defensive mix-up on the Warriors try line.
Once they had settled down to the dry and cold Dundee conditions, the Warriors slowly fought their back into the game and their fitness paid dividends as they managed to breach the Sentraal defence to lead 28-10 at halftime.
While Sentraal’s pack was superior at scrum-time, there was no way they could contain the Warriors who scored eight tries in total. To their credit, the boys from the T-Shirts for Afrika team never gave up and two late tries by Dube and Xander Kriel made the final score 54-22. Pierre Booysen succeeded with one conversion.
While coaches Boy Hesom and Dolf Kruger were obviously disappointed, there is still hope that Sentraal will triumph in the Junior Murray Cup – the draw will be done this week.
“Our guys never gave up and we are proud of them.
“The Warriors are a premier league team and we are glad that we could give them a game to remember,” said Boy.
Charles Dube was Sentraal’s backline player of the day while Gert Aucamp was the team’s best forward. Chris Mitchell was the Warrior’s backline player of the day with Jonty best forward.
Tienie Viljoen, Warrior’s number 13, was voted Castle Man of the Match and was presented with a R1000 cheque.
