It’s the test of wills for top schools

Exciting school Easter rugby action is on the cards from today as Border schools head into battle in various Easter tournaments around the country.

Border’s big three colleges, Selborne, Dale and Queen’s will all be in action at the Kearsney Easter rugby festival in Durban, while co-ed heavyweights Hudson Park High School will be competing in the King Edward School easter tournament in Johannesburg.

All four teams will be playing three matches each, today, on Saturday and then finally on Monday to end off the respective festivals.

Selborne, Queen’s and Dale face some very testing matchups at Kearsney.

Selborne start off against EG Jansen, before taking on Pretoria Boys High and then ending their festival against massive rivals Monument, with the two teams having fought out some extremely close results over the last few years.

For Dale they will hope to enjoy as good a festival as last year, where they won two of their three matches and two of their players were offered Sharks bursaries, so this year they have quite a bit to live up to.

They will take on Monument on the opening day, Drostdy on day two and close out their festival against HTS Middleburg on the final day.

Queen’s will be competing in the festival for the first time in a long time, having turned out at the KES festival over the last few years.

Queen’s play Pretoria Boys first, Noord Kaap second and they will then feature in the final game of this year’s tournament against the hosts Kearsney in what should be a cracking finale.

At the KES festival Hudson will have their own work cut out for them as they face stiff competition in Eldoraigne, Northwood and Waterkloof on days one, two and three respectively and having had a difficult start to the season they will be eager to get three good wins there.

Other Border schools who have already been in festival action over this holiday include Stirling, Cambridge, Grens and Port Rex.

Stirling, Cambridge and Grens were all involved in the Union High festival that ended this past Monday, while Port Rex hosted their first ever technical rugby fest.

For Stirling they came up against Grey College for the second year running on Saturday, and although being heavily beaten again it was a marked improvement on last year, with them going down 68-3 this time.

Stirling then bounced back in their second match on Monday, thumping Volkskool 65-0.

Grens also managed a win and a loss at the festival, starting off with a confident 26-22 victory of Gill, however they were then no match for the Grey College Cherries (2nd team), going down 60-8 in their last match.

For Cambridge it was a difficult festival as they lost both games, a tight 13-5 loss against the hosts on the opening day, before Gill comfortably beat them 45-12 on the second day.

For Port Rex they enjoyed their festival, winning both their matches and they will take some good momentum into the coming season.

Following the Easter action school teams will have a breather before getting their respective seasons officially under way in about two weeks.