AFTER a dismal start to the rugby season United finally ended their losing streak when they beat Unam 50-17 at United’s Gemsbok Park over the weekend.
Leeroy Rentzke opened up the scoring for United when he scored a try in the second minute when he caught the Unam defence off guard.
The try was converted by Winmar Rust giving United a 7-0 lead early in the game. In response, Rodney Coetzee of Unam managed to break the United defence after stealing the ball from a poorly handled pass. This resulted in a try, which went unconverted as Marques Bezuidenhout completely missed the posts.With ten minutes left in the first half, Callie Swanepoel scored another try for United, which was converted extending their lead to 14-5. Soon after, Unam’s Mbimbo Mbai scored a try when he managed to find a hole in the United’s defence. Bezuidenhout again failed to convert leaving the halftime score at 14-10.Shaun du Preez managed to score another try for United two minutes into the second half which was converted by Rust. Five minutes later Rust scored a try and converted. Soon after United where awarded a penalty which increased United’s lead to 29-10.Handling errors by Unam and poor finishes led to many turnovers which then resulted in United scoring three more tries through Swanepoel, Phillip Nashikaku and captain Jaco Swanepoel. All three were converted by Rust. Unam managed to sneak in a try past United when Mbai got the ball from a throw in and beat the defence. Bezuidenhout added the conversion to make the final score 50-17.’At last we got a win, we are very happy, hopefully we will continue to win,’ Danie Vermeulen, the coach of United, said after the game.’When we lost the first games we thought we were playing well, we just couldn’t get the results we wanted, we didn’t focus on our finishing’, Vermeulen added.Unam coach, Werner Jeffery said, ‘our defence wasn’t good enough and we made mistakes when we were on the attack, but we will go back to the drawing board.’’We were also missing four of our players due to the sevens rugby and the national team,’ Jeffery added.In other games, former log leaders Mariental defeated Reho Falcon 22-15 in a highly charged game. Mariental have so far only lost one match this season to Rehoboth while this was Falcon’s second defeat this season. Their first loss came at the hands of Kudus. This win puts Mariental back on top of the log.Defending champions Rehoboth beat Kudus 36-17 at home. It was Rehoboth’s second win of the season and Kudus’ third defeat. Wanderers lost 34-10 at home to Western Suburbs. Suburbs as a result have moved to second on the log while Wanderers have moved down to third.- namibiasport.com.na
