University of Johannesburg rugby captain Adriaan Bester said a concerted team effort was behind their first win in the Varsity Cup tournament this year after they defeated Wits at the UJ Stadium on Monday.<\/p>\n
In a typically full-blooded Johannesburg derby, the UJ outfit continued their dominance over their city rivals in the competition, defeating them for the fifth time in a row.<\/p>\n
However, the victory was not easily achieved and the result was still in the balance with five minutes to go before two late UJ tries transformed a 23-16 lead into a 39-16 result.<\/p>\n
The second of those tries, scored by flank Bester, was worth seven points.<\/p>\n
As is normal with a derby game, the UJ skipper said the action was fast and furious.<\/p>\n
“It was a great team effort which brought us this win because there’s something about these games that adds a little more to the equation,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They always seem to be a little bit faster, with more intensity and the contacts are a bit harder.<\/p>\n
“But I must really praise the team for the work they put in and now we just have to keep working hard for the rest of the season.”<\/p>\n
The UJ team has experienced a tough start to the season, suffering four losses in a row, including an agonising 27-26 defeat at the hands of Central University of Technology.<\/p>\n
Bester said the win over their Wits rivals “was massive for the club”.<\/p>\n
“We are a fairly young side and are building to get back to the top,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But this is a tough competition where there are no excuses and we’ll just keeping working hard.<\/p>\n
“After this win we will go back to the drawing board for next week, focus on our processes and prepare for the next task ahead of us.”<\/p>\n
It will be one of their toughest challenges of the season as they now face the high-riding Maties in Stellenbosch on Monday, the only unbeaten team in the competition.<\/p>\n
UJ No 9 Jack Hart, who controlled much of the play from the base of the scrum, said their victory was due to fine play by the forwards.<\/p>\n
“I just want to say thank you to the pack because we were going forward most of the time and that is all a scrumhalf wants,” he said after being named the Player that Rocks.<\/p>\n
“We worked hard during the week and we knew we had to be patient in their 22-metre area and just build on the phases.<\/p>\n
“In that respect the forwards did a brilliant job and most of the credit must go to them for this win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
University of Johannesburg rugby captain Adriaan Bester said a concerted team effort was behind their first win in the Varsity Cup tournament this year after they defeated Wits at the UJ Stadium on Monday. In a typically full-blooded Johannesburg derby, the UJ outfit continued their dominance over their city rivals in the competition, defeating them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":58746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2230,1733,1977],"class_list":["post-26958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-uj-rugby","tag-university-of-johannesburg","tag-varsity-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}