A valiant Steval Pumas side competed fiercely with DHL Western Province until the very last minute at Newlands on Saturday evening, but eventually succumbed to a 31-23 loss at the hands of their much-favoured hosts.

Heeding the call from coach MJ Mentz, the Mpumalanga side showed much better attacking execution, ball retention and defence than in their previous outings in this year’s Currie Cup.

JP Lewis of Pumas tackled by Chris van Zyl. Photo: Photo – Ron Gaunt / RealTime Images
 

Steval Pumas flyhalf Francois Brummer opened the scoring, making use of a penalty advantage to kick a drop goal after three minutes. Western Province had a try disallowed in the 18th minute, but Robert du Preez capitalised on a previous penalty advantage to level the scores. A few minutes later, Western Province centre Huw Jones broke through the defence and passed to Werner Kok for the opening try, which Du Preez converted. 

The rest of the half was a cagy affair, with the only points coming from Brummer, who missed a penalty kick and made one, bringing the score to 10-6 at the break.

Early in the second half, the Steval Pumas showed some gutsy defence to hold Western Province up twice over the tryline, but Jones dazzled with some brilliant stepping to go over for a converted try in the 57th minute. The visitors responded quickly, as Devon Williams drew a defender and put left wing JP Lewis over for a try in the corner. The back-and-forth battle continued with two converted Western Province tries which took the score to 31-11, but the Steval Pumas had the final say with superb tries from replacement centre Tyler Fisher and captain Renaldo Bothma.

Despite the eight-point loss, Mentz said that he was happy at the major improvements made by his team.

“I think that tonight we really showed the type of rugby we can play. Very happy in particular with what we did on attack, but just one or two missed tackles and some inaccurate goal kicking let us down. All-in-all it was a great improvement and we’ll be feeling positive going into our next matches,” Mentz said.        

SCORERS:

Pumas: Tries: JP Lewis, Tyler Fisher, Renaldo Bothma

Conversion: Devon Williams

Penalty: Francois Brummer

Drop goal: Brummer

Western Province: Tries: Werner Kok, Huw Jones, Leolin Zas, Jan de Klerk

Conversions: Robert du Preez (4)

Penalty: Du Preez                

Submitted by: Kathleen Bailie / Marketing: Mpumalanga Rugby (Pty) Ltd