Home & Away interschools derby Saturdays are common in Border and the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town and have a bit of traction most notably amongst Gauteng Boys’ high schools Jeppe, KES and Pretoria Boys’ High, while in KZN the Hilton-Michaelhouse matches are big attractions along with Glenwood-Maritzburg College clashes. Now return fixtures are starting to catch on in the Eastern Province big time.
Framesby of Gqeberha and agricultural school Marlow from Cradock have arranged a return fixture penned in for 2024.
The really exciting news comes out of Kariega (formerly Uitenhage) where the town’s top three rugby high schools namely Brandwag, Daniel Pienaar and Muir are coordinating their efforts to produce the inaugural TINARA CUP series. It is based on a home and away fixture between three local rivals. All games will count for points and the school finishing with the most points wins the cup – (normal points calculations apply: four points for a win, two for a draw, four try bonus point, seven or less margin losing bonus point). It is sponsored by the town’s local BUCO branch.
The cup is the Brandwag initiative and it was formalised with a proper launch function at Muir College, attended by the respective principals, head of sport, coaches and players.
There is a good deal of enthusiasm because the competition between the three schools across the age-groups has generally been good and therefore attracted much interest in the matches played in the past.
Daniel Pienaar are off to the best possible start beating Muir 39-19 in the very first ever Tinara Cup match today. DP had a huge day winning all the matches. The return game is at Muir as the season ender in August.
In the last few years DP really battled and hopefully this will allow them to strengthen their rugby program.
I really like this.