{"id":154436,"date":"2020-01-12T16:25:34","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T14:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/match-report-first-hit-out-for-the-season-featured-durban-blog\/"},"modified":"2020-01-12T16:25:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-12T14:25:34","slug":"match-report-first-hit-out-for-the-season-featured-durban-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/match-report-first-hit-out-for-the-season-featured-durban-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Match Report \u2013 First Hit Out for the Season \u2013 Featured Durban Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/sharksrugby.co.za\/2020\/01\/11\/match-report-first-hit-out-for-the-season\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Match Report \u2013 First Hit Out for the Season<\/a>: <\/p>\n<p>A Cell C Sharks XV invitational team comprising club players, junior players and even six recent schoolboys narrowly went down to NWU Pukke at Jonsson Kings Park\u00a0on Friday evening.<\/p>\n<p>The youthful combination including Under 19 and Under 21 players, coached by Mike Vowles and Phiwe Nomlomo narrowly went down to the Varsity Cup side 31-26 in the curtain-raiser to the main event, having led the 2016 Varsity Cup champions 19-5 at half-time.<\/p>\n<p>In the headline match, The Cell C Sharks defeated the visiting Russian national rugby team.<\/p>\n<p>The match formed part of the 2020 Vodacom Super Rugby pre-season warm-up schedule and the team, which did not feature the Sharks Springboks, certainly delivered a statement of intent, winning 64-14 after leading 26-7 at half-time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a pleasing performance,\u201d said head coach Sean Everitt in reflection. \u201cWe used 30 players and the fact that all 30 put up their hands for selection is a massive plus for us.\u201d<br \/>While training can prepare a side up to a particular point, it is only in the game scenario that a team will truly prove its readiness for a competition of such demand as Vodacom Super Rugby.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe quality of rugby played in tough conditions was exciting for me and the players showed composure and executed accurately in the game situation what we\u2019ve trained for over the pre-season,\u201d Everitt added.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are definitely on the right track although there are always things to work on and we do need to polish up a few things. But as far as the tweaks we made, we know we\u2019ve made progress in the right direction and certainly improved in areas we identified that needed work.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe reality check is always the first game and we\u2019re happy with where we are. Also the fact that there were no injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although the score line was very big, Everitt admitted that the Rugby World Cup participants had certainly come to play.<br \/>\u201cIt was a game of two halves and I think the Russian team was stronger in the first half than the one they put out in the second half.<br \/>\u201cThey\u2019re a very physical team and it was pleasing that we were able to stand up to their physicality which is a plus for us. I just think the energy and tempo we played with was a bit much for them though.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We look forward to our next warm-up match against Russia\u00a0on Friday night.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/sharksrugby.co.za\/2020\/01\/11\/match-report-first-hit-out-for-the-season\/\">Match Report \u2013 First Hit Out for the Season<\/a> appeared first on <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/sharksrugby.co.za\">The Sharks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fill in the form below to have your blog featured on MyDurban \u2013 we will post a snippet and title link to your new blog posts.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Submit and get free press releases here:<\/strong> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/mypr.co.za\/submit\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MyPR Free Press Release<\/a> | <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/mydurban.co.za\/meet-some-of-our-durban-bloggers\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Meet the Durban Bloggers<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Match Report \u2013 First Hit Out for the Season: A Cell C Sharks XV invitational team comprising club players, junior players and even six recent schoolboys narrowly went down to NWU Pukke at Jonsson Kings Park\u00a0on Friday evening. The youthful combination including Under 19 and Under 21 players, coached by Mike Vowles and Phiwe Nomlomo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[8275,3335,953],"class_list":{"0":"post-154436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-durban","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-mydurban-co-za","9":"tag-newspaper","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}