At the start of the 2012 rugby season, the Northwood U15A rugby boys were presented with the following challenge: to win the matches they lost last year – namely Hilton, DHS, Michaelhouse and Glenwood, and to be remembered by all as one of the “greatest U15A rugby teams” to play for Northwood School. Eleven fixtures and one tournament later these boys can look back and be very proud of achieving these goals with only the loss to Glenwood standing in the way. After many months of training and working towards their goals the boys managed to play eleven fixtures with eight wins, beating proud rugby schools such as Kearsney, Westville, Hilton, DHS and Michaelhouse to name a few along the way and managed to be placed third overall at this year’s Port Natal rugby festival. An outstanding set of results.
To me these boys will always be remembered as “warriors”, “fighters” and most importantly as the “greatest rugby team I have ever been privileged enough to coach” say Gavin Sweet. With all the politics and negativity seen in the media recently with regards to school sport these days, it is so warming to notice a group of boys who passionately play the sport they all love with their hearts worn on their sleeves and are only interested in making their families and school proud. These boys deserve all the accolades and praise as through all their hard work, determination and natural ability none of the above would have been possible.
There were many highlights this season; the 7-0 victory over Westville on our main field under lights, our excellent defence which kept the score line 8-7 against Hilton, the boys excellent all round performance against DHS to end the match 17-7 in our favour, our close 0-3 loss to College in a game that could of easily gone either way and the evenly matched contest against Kearsney which was hard fought and ended a well deserved 13-12 win at the end. These are just to name a few achievements that make this group of boys so special and an asset to Northwood School rugby.
