POOR form continues to haunt the Rhinos’ squads in their nightmare premier reserve league season after both sides went down to Varsity College on Saturday at Mick Kelly Park, Empangeni.
Rhinos 2 kicked the action off in an entertaining ‘ping pong’ match, which saw a much improved performance from the home lads.
Points were exchanged regularly throughout the match-up, with soft tries from Varsity proving lethal in the end to the Rhinos’ cause.
Tries were a-plenty in this encounter, with Lindani Mayeni (60m) and Njabulo Mathaba (70m) scoring sensational tries from general play.
Dennis Diza (2), Chezney Botha, Gareth Pitchard and Josh Divine all crossed the chalk for the visitors, with Josh van Rooyen kicking five conversions for their teams’ 35 points.
Trevor Dlodlo, Lindani Mayeni, Njabulo Mathaba and Siyabonga Mathaba all dotted down for the home side, with Lionel Viljoen kicking three conversions for their side’s 26 points.
Unfortunately, the Rhinos 2 huge defense and busting runs did not get them over the line.
Lindani Mayeni (forwards) and Sizwe Ntuli (backline) were awarded the men of the matches awards for their efforts on the park.
Lecture time
Rhinos 1 attended a 40- minute ‘lecture’ on the basic fundamentals of the game from the students, which saw them score 18 out of 55.
Varsity College came out firing, doing everything at fill tilt, which put Rhinos on the back foot, which resulted in a comfortable 41-3 half-time lead.
Barend Potgieter, Michael Cloete, David Fisher, Zaan-Pierre Bezuidenhout (2) and captain, Paul Sanders, all crossed the whitewash in the first half, with Armandt Peens kicking one penalty and four conversions.
Dirkie de Waal converted a penalty for the home side to open their scoring account.
Rhinos then took what they ‘learnt’ in the ‘lecture’ and applied it in the second half, to out score the visitors by 15 points to 14, to end that game at 55-18.
Kayde Fisher dotted down twice for Varsity with Peens and Darren Nyman each converting a try.
Nqobi Kunene, Thokozani Mdluli and Zak Dlomo barged their way over for the home side.
Men of the matches were captain Karli Schulze (forwards) and Khayelihle Mbuyazi (backline) for the Rhinos.
Rhinos will take on Crusaders in their next clash on 24 May in Durban.
