Allies and Namies in brutal derby battle

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HOËRSKOOL Alberton and Dinamika played three of the tightest and toughest derby games I have seen for a while at Namies on May 11. The u-15, u-16 and first 15 dished up some exciting rugby for the large crowd.

Namies’ u-15 team had beaten Allies’ team in the Golden Lions League the previous year and Allies were looking forward to taking revenge. The Namies side have gone from strength to strength under the guidance of Chris Sutton.

From the start it was clear that both sides were going to play positive rugby. The teams alternated defence and attack for most of the first half. Eventually Dinamika strung a few phases together and had Allies pinned in their own 22m area.

The deadlock was broken when the Namies open side flank Joshua Swanepoel broke from a loose ruck to score the opening try. The conversion missed but Namies secured the slender 5-0 lead at the break.

Interestingly the chat between the Allies players was very positive at the break. They commented that they were only five points adrift and that they could still win this one.

After the break Dinamika started the half much better and were intent on taking the game more to Allies. It paid dividends early when the left wing Luke Kearns outstripped the defence to go around behind the poles.

Grant Coetzee succeeded with the conversion to stretch the lead to 12 points. When the hooker, Dewan Van Biljon, scored an unconverted try to make it 17-0, the writing was on the wall. Namies stretched the lead to 24-0 when centre Stefan Kruger crashed over with Grant Coetzee again converting.

But Allies never gave up and they strung phases together which led to the fly half Anru Lewis crashing over for his converted try. Lewis had a superb game too. Namies hit back shortly thereafter to make the final score 31-7.

Another battle

The next game was a real humdinger between the u-16 sides. This was by far the best game of the day. Both teams ran the ball from all over and really played positive rugby. They defended like Trojans too. This was illustrated in the dying moments of the game when a Namies player lost control of the ball while being tackled basically over the line. Both sides scored superb tries and 18-10 was a fair reflection. For Namies Tumi Ntsuba scored two great tries. One of these in the corner was surely the try of the day. For Allies Damian Barnard scored twice and Nathan Small scored, with Ainden van der Linde adding a penalty. Again these teams are evenly matched.  Allies maybe having the edge defensively.

The final game of the day was between the first teams. Allies were bringing in some good form and Dinamika were wanting to prove a point after the 51-14 drubbing at Allies last year.

Dinamika played the whole game with great desire and from the beginning the tactic was clearly to take Allies on up front.

Allies’ strength this year has been their pack of forwards. They might have considered moving the ball away from the pack. Proof of this is the fact that Sheldon Mickingly was put on the left wing for Allies. He loves to run with the ball but he is a great defender too.

He did the defending well but rarely got the ball. This is an indication of the fact that Namies had the Allies forwards under a bit of pressure so they couldn’t move the ball at will. To their credit Allies absorbed the pressure.

They stuck to their structures and started getting the upper hand back. The one try that I think epitomises this was the try by JP Jacobs. Allies had about 15 phases of pick up and drive’s.

Eventually Allies prevailed 26-15, after leading 11-10 at the break, with tries by Jacobs, Shaun Potgieter and Thomas Duvenhage. Damian Holl kicked three penalties and added a conversion.

For Namies Dylan Moller scored twice with fullback Ronaldo Van Rooyen adding a conversion and a penalty.

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