On Friday 26th April Northwood 1st Team surfed round one of the KZN School Surfing League, in very difficult conditions with the 6ft waves and strong winds down at Dairy beach. The boys surfed well in the hour long tag team heat with Bevan Willis posting the highest score out of all the schools. The team was disciplined and did well not to incur any penalties, finishing well within the time limit. Well done to Mark Fouche who was named best judge on the day.
Northwood School vs Crawford North Coast B, Ashton College, St. Henry’s and Glenwood (5 teams per Heat)
Northwood 1st XV had their supporters sitting on the edge of their seats on Saturday, when they put in a great performance against Maritzburg College. Northwood quickly raced into a 3-0 lead (penalty by S Makhanye) within the first few minutes, as they dominated territory and possession. With the College XV clearly rattled, Northwood pressed on and were awarded a second penalty. Makhanye made the lead 6-0 and Northwood continued to play in College’s half. However, a rolling maul (which led to a try) and then a charge down in the Northwood 22m close to half time led to a soft try for College, giving them a 12-6 lead at half time.
The second half was a titanic battle, with both sides making incisive breaks. College were first to put points on the board, when the fullback evaded tackles to score a converted try. Northwood bounced back quickly, with Macdonald offloading brilliantly in the tackle to the speedster Sobahle, who scored a great wingers try (converted by Makhanye) to narrow the deficit to 19-13. With 15 minutes to go, the College fullback again evaded tackles and scored a converted try. Northwood had 2 further try scoring opportunities, but the last passes did not go to hand, resulting in a 26-13 victory for College.
This is a significant improvement on last year’s results and bodes well for 2014, as the team consisted of 9 Gr11’s. A great team effort all round.
The Northwood 1st hockey team suffered their first loss of the season against a spirited Maritzburg College team on Saturday.
Some poor finishing from the Northwood team and some outstanding goal keeping from the College keeper saw the visitors come away with a hard fought 3 – 2 victory.
Northwood dominated the first half and after scoring early through Dale van der Merwe, failed to capitalise further on that dominance taking a 1 – 0 lead into the break.
The second half saw Northwood continue to create chances but the College team played with heart and created three chances of their own. They made no mistake in grabbing those chances and took a strong 3 – 1 lead into the last 7 minutes of the game.
Northwood managed to pull one back through a penalty corner flick from Dale van der Merwe but were unable to get the third.
A hard fought, spirited effort from the Maritzburg College team saw them come out deserving winners on the day.
Northwood kept the momentum going when they beat Clifton 5 – 1 in their opening encounter of the KZN Schools night league on Wednesday night.
The schools night league see’s some creative changes to the standard format of the game where teams play three 15 minute chukka’s and penalty corners are replaced by an 8 second 1 on 1 with the goal keeper.
Northwood opened the scoring in the first chukka through Matthew de Sousa when he wrong footed the Clifton keeper in a 1 on 1. Clifton answered back almost immediately with a fantastic reverse stick finish.
The second chukka saw Northwood start to create more chances and goals by Dale van der Merwe and Matthew de Sousa gave them a 3 – 1 lead going into the third chukka.
Clifton played some great hockey but were unable to take their chances in the circle. With 7 minutes remaining Clifton were unfortunate to have their keeper injured and were forced to play with a kicking back. Northwood seized the opportunity to score two more goals through Dale van der Merwe and Steve McManus.
1st team beat Glenwood (3rds) 11 games to 5 Y. Devnarrian and G. Wright (1st and 3rd seeds) both had convincing 3-0 wins S. du Plessis managed to beat his opponent 3 games to 2.
K. Pillay had a really closely contested match with the 1st game going 17-15 to his opponent, but unfortunately lost 2 games to 3.
2nd team beat Glenwood (4ths) 9 games to 7 S. de Marigny had the closest match, narrowly beating his opponent 3 games to 2, as did D. Fitzgerald. H. Cunningham had a superb 3 – 0 win, while J. Fraser lost his match 0 games to 3.
The 3rd team vs DHS (1st) lost 8 games to nil.
The 4th team vs DHS (2nds) lost 7 games to 2 with R. Lukan being the only player to win his match 2 games to 1.
On an extremely cold, windy and very wet Saturday morning, Northwood traveled to Hilton to fulfill our fixtures. Rain played havoc with fixtures across the province (and most parts of the country), resulting in this being one of the few fixtures completed. The Northwood 1st team were without 4 key players for this clash due to injuries and this had a knock-on effect on the other open sides.
The field was soggy and churned up from earlier games when play started at 15H00 and resembled a mud bath. Both teams struggled with the underfoot conditions in the 1st half, with Sasassa Makhanye (NW) and Cameron Wright (Hilton) having numerous shots at goals. Makhanye seemed to be the better kicker on the day, converting 70% of his kicks, while Wright struggled in the wet. Half time saw Hilton leading 16-6, having been caught short of defenders out wide twice, leading to 2 Hilton tries.
A quick try early in the 2nd half saw Hilton leading 21-6, before Northwood’s TC Edmunds crashed over for an unconverted try in the corner. The conditions took its toll and the referee enforced uncontested scrums early in the half, taking the wind out of Northwood’s sails. Makhanye and Wright slotted another penalty each, ending the game at 24 – 14.
While the results did not necessarily go our way, there certainly were some highlights. The U14A team are a talented bunch of boys and just need to play from the first whistle, as they inevitably play catch up rugby and normally win every second half. Well done to the U14D team on drawing their first game against Hilton. The U15A team put in their best performance to date and were always in with a chance of victory, until 2 late Hilton tries put the score out of reach. This is a team to watch.
The U16A team turned in another good performance on the main field and I would like to believe that a number of these boys must be in contention for selection for the North Durban team in 2 weeks time.
Northwood produced another solid performance against Hilton College on Saturday in some extremely wet and cold playing conditions.
Hilton started the stronger of the two teams and created a number of circle entries and a penalty corner but failed to capitalise on their opportunities.
Northwood managed to settle down and started to play the flowing hockey which has been a feature of their play in the early phase of the season. The team created a few quality scoring chances and eventually took the lead when Dale van der Merwe fired a rocket drag flick into the net to beat the Hilton keeper.
Hilton College where not without their own chances and Northwood keeper Kyle Pillay was in fantastic form making a number of great saves.
Northwood made it 2 – 0 just before the half time whistle when the skillful Matthew de Sousa found the unmarked Simon du Plessis who made no mistake with the finish.
After the break Northwood continued to pile on the pressure and were rewarded with a penalty stroke when a striker was fouled badly in the circle. Tylo Remke was clinical with the finish to make it 3 – 0.
Hilton created a few penalty corners before the final whistle but Kyle Pillay managed to keep them out to give his team a clean slate and a good 3 – 0 victory.
All the Northwood rugby teams travelled to Johannesburg on Friday for their games against Jeppe on Saturday. The journey proved to be a long one, with the busses only arriving at Jeppe at 4:15pm. The hosting parents were there to greet us and within 30 minutes, everyone was on their way home.
The cold Johannesburg weather had our boys shivering on Saturday and this, coupled with the altitude, travel fatigue and dry air, made things difficult for the teams. They nevertheless gave a good account of themselves and the closeness of most of the “A” team scores reflected this. Well done to the U16A, U16B, 2nd and 1st team, who played outstanding games.
After tough games against Jeppe on the weekend, Northwood “A” teams played against St Benedicts on Monday. Although still stiff and tired, The Northwood boys showed their spirit and fought to the end. The behaviour and spirit of the Northwood boys must be commended, as they made us proud to be associated with Northwood.
Well done to the U16A and 1st teams on great wins.
