Kearsney and Clifton in thrilling draw, big wins for Hilton and Glenwood
Kearsney College and Clifton College delivered a thrilling 2-2 draw on the AH Mason Astro in Botha’s Hill on Saturday, with Clifton scoring the equaliser off the very last move of the match.
They trailed by a goal when they awarded a penalty corner with less than 20 seconds remaining. Then, during the PC, the final hooter sounded, but the ball had not left the circle yet, so when Luke Carolan struck it into the Kearsney goalbox it ended all square.
There was a touch of confusion from some of the Kearsney players, but the umpires conferred and correctly awarded the goal.
In the first half, Clifton found Kearsney’s defences well organised as the hosts did a good job of zone marking by moving well as a unit.
It was a tactical affair, with both teams probing for gaps. When the deadlock was finally broken, though, it resulted in three goals being scored in the space of five minutes.
Keegan de Jager gave the home side the lead with a superbly taken penalty corner. He took possession of the ball on the left castle, well wide of the goalkeeper’s right post, but then fired with pinpoint accuracy across Clifton netminder Georg Wolhuter to find the net in the opposite corner.
Two minutes later, Clifton was caught out on the counterattack, with Kearsney’s swift movement of the ball up to the circle creating an opportunity for Josh Snyman, who finished well.
The visitors from Durban appeared to be in trouble, but vice-captain Jason Adams quickly got them back into the game with a field goal, also from a counterattack, just before halftime.
In the second stanza, Clifton did most of the pressing, but Kearsney stood firm. Three minutes from the end, Clifton came close to equalising, but a teasing ball from the left, across the face of the goalbox, just missed the stick of captain, Zach Williamson, whose dive was a fraction of a second too late.
Still, coach Calvin Price‘s charges kept at it and they were rewarded with the last-minute penalty goal that earned them a share of the spoils.
Kearsney’s coach Keegan Pearce commented: “We played a few warm-up games against DHS and Glenwood, but we didn’t move the ball as well as we did in this game. That’s what I thought probably was our greatest strength today. We were good on the counterattack. That’s where we were at our best.”
Going up 2-0 was tricky, he added: “To keep them out for so long, it’s hard to have a 2-0 lead. It’s the two-goal trap. You go from 2-0 to 2-1, and in the last five minutes it can go either way.”
“They were good,” Clifton’s coach Calvin Price said about Kearsney. “I don’t think we hit full stride today. But we showed incredible character to come back and make it 2-2. I’ll take the draw from that.
“Kearsney had a really good structure and I thought they were defensively sound. What I didn’t like was we tried to go too long, too directly, too quickly.
“What I did enjoy when we finally got the ball, was we started to find the little connections on the overlaps. It was just a matter of understanding and being a little bit patient. We weren’t patient in the first chukka. In the second and third, we got better at it, so we had more control of the game.”
Hilton College and Glenwood, meanwhile, were in scorching form in their first matches of the season. Hilton outplayed Westville Boys’ High 4-0 at Hilton, while Glenwood ran out 2-0 victors at St Charles College.
Hilton was swiftly out of the blocks against Westville. Coach Damian Kimfley’s charges seized control of proceedings and made good use of their plentiful possession with two strikes in quick succession, from Ben Wilson and vice-captain Matt Thomas, to go ahead in the first chukka.
Thomas shares the role of vice-captain with Regan Mudau, while Xavier Enslin is Hilton’s captain for 2025.
In the second chukka, Hilton’s pressure on Westville paid further dividends as they added two more goals through Tadi Hove and Chase Smith to cruise into halftime with a 4-0 advantage.
With typical fighting spirit, Westville kept battling away in the second half. They kept Hilton from adding to their score, but the home side’s defenders also controlled the Griffin’s attackers, conceding only one penalty corner in the match.
“The win was a brilliant team effort. Everyone played their role well,” Kimfley said after the game.
In Pietermaritzburg, Glenwood opened their season with a thrilling 2-0 victory over St Charles.
Coach Michael Labuschagne‘s side looked rusty in the early exchanges. They struggled to string together passes and they turned over possession often, which meant the Saints‘ goalbox wasn’t threatened.
“They held on to the ball for too long and were unable to play their normal fluid hockey,” Braydon Naidoo, Glenwood’s Director of Hockey, reckoned.
After halftime, though, captain Siya Malatjie and his team found their groove. The longer the game wore on, the more menacing they became.
They utilised their flanks well to create several baseline entries. One of them resulted in a goalmouth scramble after a shot at goal rebounded off the post. Fortunately for Glenwood, Krian Jugoo was at the back post, from where he tapped in to open the scoring.
Jugoo is blessed with fast hands and a lethal backhand. He also has a knack for getting into good positions in the circle, which brought him the first goal. It also brought him the game’s second just five minutes after the opener when he found himself in space, open for a simple pass, which he converted.
RESULTS
Kearsney 2-2 Clifton
Hilton 4-0 Westville
Glenwood 2-0 St Charles
