4 May 2023
Saint Charles College celebrates its Old Boys’ Weekend on 5 and 6 May, with a full programme of hockey and rugby derby fixtures against Clifton College on Saturday in Pietermaritzburg.
If it was basketball we were talking about, the pick would be Saint Charles over any other team in the country. If it was water polo, the pick would be Clifton over almost any other school in South Africa. But we’re talking hockey and rugby, and predicting a favourite between the two schools is well-nigh impossible. They’re very well matched, which is ideal for Saints’ Old Boys’ Weekend.
On the hockey front, it has been a challenging season for the Saints’ 1st XI, but they have performed well against strong opposition; there hasn’t been an easy game on their schedule.
They have been well beaten, but not overrun by three top notch teams – DHS, Jeppe and Hilton College. They suffered a narrow 0-1 defeat to Pretoria Boys’ High, too. Saints have also shared 1-1 draws with Saint John’s College and Wynberg Boys’ High. They, furthermore, scored an excellent 3-1 victory over KES at the Nomads Festival.
This is a good side, as they showed in a pre-season game against a very good Northwood team, which Pinnacle Schools witnessed, but what to expect from them in terms of a result is difficult, one of the reasons being that they have played far fewer games than their opposition. What one can predict, without reservation, is that Saints will fight from first to last. They have quality and spirit in their ranks.
At their best, they’re very good
Clifton has had a very busy season, and the results have been mostly up, but sometimes down. At their best, they are very good, as they recently showed at the Hibbert Shield in Gqeberha where they finished joint top of Pool A after a thrilling 3-3 draw with a powerful Paarl Gimnasium team.
Unfortunately, Connor McKenzie and his team appeared to run out of legs a little towards the end of the tournament but, if they’ve recovered from their exertions of the past weekend, they are capable of some wonderful hockey. They’ve played some fine stuff in recent times.
They’re also a hard-nosed bunch, not giving much away, as they showed in their victory over Maritzburg College, which was a first for the school – strange to say that when one considers how good some of their teams have been over the years, including the wonderful 1st XI of 2018, captained by Matt Lewis, which was beaten only in its final match of the year, when he was injured.
Matt Lewis takes his hockey dream Down Under | Pinnacle Schools (pinnacle-schools.com)
Only five matches
As is the case with their 1st hockey team, the Saints’ 1st XV has also played considerably less rugby than Clifton, with the team running out only five times thus far in 2023, while the Durban side has played nine matches.
The season didn’t start well for Saint Charles, who suffered a heavy 14-52 defeat to DHS. It turns out DHS is a potent side, capable of absolutely destroying most opposition on any given day. Just ask HTS Drostdy, a good, well-coached team, who were put to the sword to the tune of 64-17 this past weekend at the Absa Wildeklawer Festival.
DHS sensational in brilliant win over Drostdy | Pinnacle Schools (pinnacle-schools.com)
Saints also went down big in their second match of the season, with Pretoria Boys’ High beating them 41-5 at the Saint John’s Easter Rugby Festival. However, in their next outing, one saw the potential of Saint Charles properly revealed as they produced some excellent rugby in a 31-9 win over Saint Benedict’s College.
Two losses against two good teams have since followed, 7-18 to Saint John’s College and 10-39 to Hilton College, but this is a very competitive team capable of hanging with most sides.
The same could be said of Clifton. In fact, Pinnacle Schools has made that observation this season already.
Clifton have won four and lost five matches, but they’ve been subjected to some awfully tough opposition. Nobody had a more demanding slate of games at the Saint Stithian’s Easter Festival than Clifton, which cost them defeats to some of 2023’s better teams: Kingswood College (14-45), a resurgent Michaelhouse (21-37) and Bishops Diocesan College (10-41).
They’ve also gone down 5-33 to Maritzburg College, another team loaded with class. For long periods of that game, Clifton enjoyed the territorial advantage, but College has some devastating counter-attacking talent and that proved to be the difference in the contest.
College withstand “dogged” Clifton test | Pinnacle Schools (pinnacle-schools.com)
Clifton started their season with two big victories, running out 59-0 winners over Port Shepstone and 73-0 victors against Richards Bay High, but they fell 0-19 to Kearsney College in their first match against one of the top 10 KZN boys’ schools. Played in Botha’s Hill, it was very hard-fought.
More recently, Clifton has been back on the winning trail, over-running Saint Andrew’s School (Bloemfontein) 47-7 and then beating Sarel Cilliers 14-0.
These results suggest that Saints and Clifton are very solid teams, not quite at the top of a very strong KwaZulu-Natal schoolboy scene in 2023, but more than capable of dishing up some fine rugby. And they should produce an exciting battle on Old Orchards on Saturday.
Hockey
1st XI: Saint Charles College vs Clifton College at 12:30
Rugby
1st XV: Saint Charles College vs Clifton College at 15:00
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