30 April 2023
The Maritzburg College 1st football team was stopped cold by Brebner on Sunday morning at the Absa Wildeklawer Festival in Kimberley, going down 2-5 to the Free State power in their final pool match.
The Bloemfontein school is renowned for its football prowess, and they showed why with a good performance against Mateo Horstead and his team.
“It’s a part of sport. We lost,” College Director of Soccer, Nic Haswell, said matter-of-factly to Pinnacle Schools.
“To be honest, our boys were perhaps a little bit naïve when we came up against a team that had a similar game plan to us. They kept the ball quite nicely, and then when our guys got the ball, instead of keeping it in the way that they know they can, they tried to rush, which played into Brebner’s hands.
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“On top of that, we conceded two very soft goals, terrible mistakes. You can’t do that against a top team.
“Although the scoreline was 5-2, and I will concede that they were the better team, they weren’t that much better than us. The scoreline is not a true reflection of the game, I feel, but we take it on the chin.”
Missed out
College finished third in their group, which meant they missed out on the quarterfinals, bringing their participation in the event to an end.
Haswell said he expects Brebner to be there at the end of the festival. “Brebner and HTS Louis Botha look like the two best teams in the tournament,” he reckoned.
“We knew Brebner were very tough. There were some positives. We showed some College fight, and towards the end we showed that we could very quickly score two goals. If we had have taken one or two of our chances in the first half, who knows what could have happened.
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“We have a young squad, and they showed, although they are a quality team, there is still a lot of learning to do. You could see when they came up against a team that was perhaps stronger than them in their possession style of play, they hadn’t experienced that.”
Haswell said there was some disappointment that the team did not fare better, but the results do not solely determine the success or failure of the tour.
“We would like to have done better, but there are a lot of positives to take away, and that’s the most important thing for the schoolboys,” he concluded.
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