Clifton wins season opener at Westville
Westville Boys’ High hosted Clifton College on Friday for both schools’ first matches of the 2025 hockey season.
While the Griffin won the age group games, it was Clifton that came away with a 2-1 victory in the clash of the 1st XIs.
After a goalless first chukka, the deadlock was broken early in the second quarter by a turnover high up the field, which put Byron Ward in the clear and he finished from close range to put the visitors in front.
Then, with only seven seconds remaining in the first half, Westville won a penalty corner and Declan Boynton struck to make it 1-1 at the break.
Early in the second half, Clifton went ahead again, with vice-captain Jason Adams supplying the finish.
He and the skipper, Zach Williamson, helped Clifton control the midfield, which went a long way towards securing the win for coach Calvin Price‘s charges.
They also worked hard and effectively on defence, which made it a tough slog for Westville to break through and create clear-cut scoring chances.
Reflecting on that aspect of his team’s performance, Price told SuperSport Schools Plus after the contest: “We have worked a lot on our recoveries. That’s the most important thing, the hard yards off the ball. All in all, it was a very good performance by all of them.”
Clifton went into the contest without their best player, SA u17 star Ryde Brissett, who is set to undergo shoulder surgery and has, unfortunately, been ruled out for the season. Still, they have lost only four players from last year’s team that was good enough to score wins over Durban High School (DHS) and Northwood, teams that enjoyed very strong seasons.
Westville, by contrast, is a younger side, and that showed as they took a while to settle.
“We don’t have the most experienced team this year, so it’s a little bit of a trickier one,” Westville coach Cam Mackay said. “We’ve usually got dominant centre-backs, and we’ve got two new centre-backs. That’s a tricky one to start with.”
That was not a criticism of the performance of the Westville centre-backs. Rather, it was a tip of the hat to last year’s pair, Owen Slack and Nicolas Ackerman, who were experienced and very effective at controlling the ball movement and distribution from the back.
The inexperience of the Westville team showed itself, though, as Mackay pointed out: “I think we lacked a little bit of confidence at times. And our passing in the midfield was not great.
“We let ourselves down in small moments. We missed traps here and there. We were getting turned over in the midfield way too much. Then, when we did get the chances up front, our execution at penalty corner (PC) time [wasn’t there]. That’s one of our big positives this year. We’ve got good flickers.”
In the first match of the season, though, the Westville penalty corner strikers were unable to make their mark on the contest. “We have a good PC team. If we scored a PC and we ended at 2-2, it would have been easier to take.
“It’s not the end of the world at all. Small moments make a big difference,” Mackay said philosophically.
Clifton coach Calvin Price, understandably, had more reasons to feel optimistic about his team’s performance: “I don’t mind a victory first game in,” he said with a smile.
“We’re a bit rusty. Overall, though, the idea was to be simple, effective, and basic. The first chukka wasn’t our greatest, but we got better as we got into the game. Nerves showed. We had four debutants, but they showed their worth.
“I’m very happy with the first game, I hope we now take it further.”
One of the most impressive aspects of Clifton’s win was their work rate, which stayed strong from the first whistle to the last.
“We’ve worked hard on our fitness.” Price said. “They’ve had three sessions a week from January right through [until now], and we have a new pod system we’re using, so we’re putting a lot of emphasis on conditioning.”
With different levels of experience, the sides carry different expectations further into the season.
“I said to them in the beginning, we have set high expectations for ourselves this year. We want to be one of the best around, and to win like that was a good start for us. I think we can only get better,” Price shared.
“We’re looking forward to this season. That’s why we put a lot into the off-season, to make sure we’re good to go.”
Mackay’s aspirations were more measured. “We know we’re not going to be challenging everyone this year,” he said, “but we’re trying to be the hardest working team, and we’re trying to be a good team on the counter.
“We’ve tried to not put too much of an expectation on the side. We know it is going to be a bit of a rebuild this season, which is important.”
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