The final score of 25-19 does not do justice to UP-Tuks’ performance as they played most of the rugby, but simply made too many mistakes and also had to deal with a Boland referee who was completely out of her depth. Her performance was one of the worst one can ever dread to witness and it goes beyond reason why she was appointed for such a high profile match. If she is one on the top local referees as was told for the truth, then the Boland Rugby Referees Association is as good as dead.

UP-Tuks coach Blikkies Groenewald was disappointed with his team’s defeat, the first in seven matches since the Varsity Cup final.

“The scoreboard may not have reflected it, but I am under no illusion that we were the better team. We had eight line-breaks, but only scored one try and that is what made the difference as Maties put their chances to much better use. We will also have to address our discipline as we again got penalized too much ánd got a yellow card (Dabeon Draghoender).”

Groenewald added that everything was not lost as “we have played some of the best and most structured rugby on the first two days of the tournament and that is something to build on”.
UP-Tuks will play NWU-Pukke on Friday in the 3rd/4th place play-off.

Gerrit Smith (fullback) scored all UP-Tuks’ points with a goal and four penalties.