The Voice (Francistown)
Archie Mokoka
25 March 2008
Francistown — Twenty-six Botswana secondary schools rugby teams and a Zimbabwean high school team battled for glory last weekend at the Jwaneng Rugby Club.
The two-day tournament, which was organised by the Botswana Rugby Union, featured 10 women teams and sixteen men's teams.
This tournament gave the union a chance to identify quality players from the northern side of the country and their southern counterparts whom they will put in training camps to prepare them for another battle to take place on the 29th of March. The winning team will represent the country against the Zimbabwean National Under 18 team.
The visiting Zimbabwean boys, Glifford High, emerged glorious after defeating Botswana powerhouse Mater Spei College 5-nill. In the semi-finals, Mater Spei beat Maruapula School 10-nill after a game that caused stirs among the spectators, with some saying it was the best game of the day.
Glifford High proved to be too slippery to catch and were too swift to tackle as they dodged their heftier counterparts to victory. They had previously thrashed Livingstone Kolobeng College 17-nill.
Rugby Development Manager, Zilwele Khumalo, said they had chosen the Zimbabwean team to come and play with our boys because they are closer to our skills level than the South Africans.
The union had also intended to measure the skill level of their development efforts and Khumalo said that they were satisfied with the 50% improvement compared to last year.
"We started the development three years ago at JC level and these are products of the development," Khumalo said.
The preparatory camps will be held over the Easter holidays over three days with five more days afterwards. After the dust from the schools had settled, BDF Cheetahs proved to be more ferocious than the UB Rhinos when they beat them 10-5.
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