Red hot battle for WP’s Craven Week 10 jersey just got hotter

There’s a healthy debate to be had about who should be Western Province’s first choice flyhalf at Craven Week this season.

If you’d backed Wynberg star Yaqeen Ahmed ahead of the 2024 season, you’d have gotten decent support. No doubt the Craven Week 2023 backup to Paarl Gim superstar Kyle Smith, is a serious talent who played with lots of maturity and a good dose of X in 2023. It would be natural for most to assume he’s the flyhalf elect for this year’s premier youth week event.

Boland Landbou’s Retagan van Rooi was another first choice u17 starter in 2023. He showed more than enough to suggest he is going to be a kingpin on Paardeberg Field and elsewhere during 2024.

However no sooner had this new season started and bang! Before you know, in drops ⁠Viaan Mentoor (HJS Paarl Boys’ High) and Joshua Dampies (Paul Roos) into the very same conversation in the biggest way possible – no bars held back standout performances.

Things were already starting to look overcrowded in the South of the country before Rondebosch decided to give that positional switcharoo another go for the Westville game at KERF – Dylan Miller to fullback and David Simon to flyhalf.

Dylan Miller did a first class job at the back while David Simon was the showstopper at Kearsney Easter Festival Day-1 with a sublime player of the day type performance.

If anyone wondered what the fuss about DS was all about, well viewing the Westville match would be prima facie evidence of a gifted player putting up his hand really high to in that WP flyhalf discussion. The 2023 Western Province Craven Week B-team capped player is hot property, having vision, calmness and a high success rate in his executions.

For the record there are plenty of unions who would kill to have a flyhalf like Paarl Gim’s Chandler Green in their midst.