South African Sports News — 3 August

Two try Lambie sinks Cheetahs
The Sharks scored their third con­sec­ut­ive vic­tory of the sea­son when they defeated the Vodacom Free State Cheetahs 25–13 in a tense Currie Cup encounter at Vodacom Park in Bloemfontein on Saturday after­noon. Nineteen-year-old centre Patrick Lambie (pic­tured) turned out to be the hero for the Sharks, scor­ing two late tries to power the vis­it­ors home.

Trailing 13–11 with nine minutes to go, the Sharks looked down and out, but just when it seemed all was lost the inspir­a­tional Lambie came to the party and pro­duced some magini­fi­cent rugby to send the home side pack­ing and their sup­port­ers into the throes of depression.

The Cheetahs, press­ing hard for the knock­out blow, surged towards the Sharks’ line only to lose the ball going for­ward. The vis­it­ors then lauched a quick counter attack from their 22 where clever inter­play between ath­letic No 8 Ryan Kankowski and left wing Lwazi Mvovo took the Sharks to within metres of their oppon­ents tryline where the ball came free for Lambie to surge for­ward, reach out and score.

The tal­en­ted centre made no mis­take with the con­ver­sion to put the Sharks seven points in front (18–13) and then sealed vic­tory for the KwaZulu-Natal out­fit with another excel­lent con­ver­ted try two minutes from time. The teen­age sen­sa­tion fin­ished off a move after receiv­ing a pass over the top from Keegan Daniels at the end of another impress­ive break-out in which Mvovo again fea­tured prominently.

It was a bit­terly dis­ap­point­ing defeat for the Cheetahs who ended up without a single log point for their efforts des­pite enjoy­ing the bulk of the pos­ses­sion. However, the Free Staters will only have them­selves to blame for fail­ing to kill off the Sharks who only really star­ted to find their rythmn and gain momentum in the final 10 minutes.

The Cheetahs opened the scor­ing in the 11^th minute when fly­half Louis Strydom slot­ted a pen­alty, but that effort was can­celled out by Lambie who was suc­cess­ful with a pen­alty kick of his own to level mat­ters at 3–3. Scrumhalf Tewis de Bruyn put the Cheetahs back in front with a clever quick tap that saw him run through a clutch of Sharks tight-forwards to dot down for a valu­able five pointer.

Strydom added the extra points to make the half time score 10–3 in favour of the home side. It was a deserved lead for the Cheetahs who dom­in­ated pro­ceed­ings in the open­ing 40 minutes. However, whereas in the first half the Sharks battled to con­trol pos­ses­sion, after half-time they enjoyed much more of the game by pro­du­cing a more dis­cip­lined and determ­ined display.

The Sharks’ new-found assert­ive­ness nearly earned them a try soon after the re-start as they raced towards the Cheetahs line, but some unlucky bounces and indif­fer­ent hand­ling pre­ven­ted them from fin­ish­ing off. Flanker Juan Smith and eighth­man Ashley Johnson were out­stand­ing for the Cheetahs and the bust­ling Johnson might well have picked up the man of the match award had it not been for Lambie’s hero­ics in the final 10 minutes.

Smith’s depar­ture from the field not long after a clash of heads with Sharks lock Ross Skeate was a telling moment, par­tic­u­larly as it coin­cided with the arrival on the field of the abras­ive Jean Deysel. The power­ful flanker is an import­ant com­pon­ent in the Sharks machine when he is there, and he proved this again on Saturday by com­bin­ing effect­ively with the dan­ger­ous Kankowski to put the Cheetahs under pressure.

Another pen­alty from Strydom increased the home side’s lead to 10 points (13–3) with 36 minutes to go, but Lambie kept the vis­it­ors in touch by slot­ting his second pen­alty after an infrindge­ment from the Cheetahs. Kankowski nearly scored for the Sharks in the 52^nd minute, but the ref­eree could not award the try after the rangy No 8 was adjudged by the TMO to have knocked the ball on as he dot­ted down.

However, the Sharks were not to be denied when burly prop Eugene van Staden crashed over the line after some excel­lent work from Lambie who man­aged to get the final pass away des­pite being well tackled. Although he failed to add the extra points, Lambie more than made up for it with his two excel­lent tries in the clos­ing minutes which pro­pelled the Sharks to victory.

Although the sco­reline did flat­ter the Sharks some­what, full credit must be given to John Plumtee’s men for rais­ing the tempo of their game when it mattered most. The Sharks remain in second pos­i­tion on the log – two points behind lead­ers Vodacom Western Province who made it four wins from four starts when they crushed the Barloworld Toyota Pumas in Cape Town on Friday evening.

Scorers
Sharks 25 – Tries: Patrick Lambie (2) and Eugene van Staden. Conversions: Lambie (2). Penalties: Lambie (2).
Cheetahs 13 – Try: Tewis de Bruyn. Conversion: Louis Strydom. Penalties: Strydom (2).

Other res­ults (from left to right)
Friday
GWK Griquas 41 – Platinum Leopards 27
Vodacom Western Province 54 – Barloworld Toyota Pumas 13
Saturday
Vodacom Blue Bulls 32 – Xerox Lions 18

Upcoming fix­tures
Friday
Pumas vs Cheetahs – Puma Stadium, Witbank
Bulls vs Leopards – Loftus Versveld – 7.10pm
Saturday
Griquas vs Western Province – GWK Park, Kimberley – 3pm
Sharks vs Lions – The Absa Stadium, Durban – 5.05pm

Currie Cup log (After four rounds)
Pos  Team      Points
1.    WP           18
2.    Sharks      16
3.    Griquas     15
4.    Bulls         11
5.    Cheetahs    9
6.    Lions          6
7.    Pumas        5
8.    Leopards     2

Nongqayi suf­fers shock defeat in Mexico
Simphiwe ‘The Golden Master’ Nongqayi (pic­tured right) had an even­ing he’d rather for­get when he lost his International Boxing Federation (IBF) super fly­weight title to Mexican Juan Alberto Rosas in Tepic, Mexico on Saturday night. The 38-year-old South African, mak­ing the second defence of the title he won from Mexican legend Jorge Arce in September last year, was simply over­powered by the hard hit­ting Rosas who dom­in­ated pro­ceed­ings from the open­ing bell.

The highly motiv­ated 25-year-old Mexican had been taunted by the South African vet­eran at the weigh-in, which had almost res­ul­ted in a pre-fight brawl. When it came to fight time how­ever, Nongqayi couldn’t back up his loud mouth and was totally out­gunned by the younger, hun­grier Rosas.

After being pun­ished to both head and body from the open­ing bell, Nongqayi even­tu­ally took a knee early in the sixth round. While the clearly dis­tressed cham­pion was pon­der­ing his next move, ref­eree Ray Corona decided he had seen enough and waved pro­ceed­ings over with one minute hav­ing elapsed in the round. It was a good stop­page as Nongqayi was clearly on a hid­ing to noth­ing and would have even­tu­ally been knocked out by the challenger.

Rosas, a vet­eran of tough fights against Fernando Montiel, Jose Lopez, Aj Banal and Everardo Morales, recor­ded his 32^nd win against five defeats with 26 of those wins com­ing via the short route. Nongqayi’s defeat was the first of his pro­fes­sional career against 16 wins (6 KO’s) and a draw.

The ex-champion blamed the defeat on weight prob­lems, claim­ing he had out­grown the super-flyweight divi­sion. However, a more likely explan­a­tion for the loss was that he simply got old overnight – a scen­ario that plays itself out over and over again in the fight game.

There were signs that Nongqayi was start­ing to slip after being held to a draw by lightly regarded Frenchman Malik Bouziane in a pre­vi­ous title defence in April, and those signs were con­firmed when the cham­pion came apart at the seams against Rosas. Nongqayi’s resound­ing defeat left himi facing an uncer­tain future, but per­haps a rest and a move up to ban­tam­weight would be just what the doc­tor ordered for ‘The Golden Master’.

Meanwhile, another title changed hands over the week­end when chal­lenger Phumzile ‘Sweet Chocalate’ Matyila dethroned defend­ing South African ban­tam­weight cham­pion Nkqubela ‘The Destroyer’ Gwazela (pic­tured) via split decision at the Orient Theatre in East London on Sunday after­noon. Two judges scored the bout 115–114 and 116–115 in favour of Matyila with a third judge giv­ing Gwazela the nod by a sim­il­arly nar­row mar­gin of 115–113.

In an action packed con­test Gwazela made a fast start, land­ing some power­ful punches on the chal­lenger in the first half of the fight. However, Matyila man­aged to stay com­pet­it­ive by keep­ing the cham­pion at bay with an edu­cated left jab and good movement.

The heavy fis­ted Gwazela, who had set a tor­rid pace in the early going, began to slow down dra­mat­ic­ally in rounds seven and eight and Matyila was now able to con­trol the fight from a dis­tance, out box­ing the cham­pion and avoid­ing his wild punches. Round nine was a dom­in­ant one for Matyila who peppered Gwazela with com­bin­a­tions, split­ting his lip and leav­ing him gasp­ing for air.

However, just when it seemed the cham­pion was a beaten man, he staged a sur­pris­ing rally at the begin­ning of the next round, landed some use­ful punches on the chal­lenger who began to retreat. Gwazela kept up the pres­sure in the last two rounds against a back-pedalling Matyila who, judging by his lack of urgency, must have felt he had done enough to win the fight.

His cal­cu­la­tions proved to be cor­rect after the judges had tal­lied up their score­cards, but in real­ity, Matyila can con­sider him­self some­what lucky to have been awar­ded the ver­dict against Gwazela. The ex-champion’s efforts cer­tainly war­rant a rematch against Matyila whose record improved to 17–1-2 (9 KO’s) while Gwazela slipped to 19–8 (14 KO’s).

Other res­ults from the Eyethu Promotions bill
(W=points vic­tory, TKO = tech­nical knock­out vic­tory)
Luzuko Siyo W6 Motswaki Moselesele (junior fly­weights)
Unathi Qgokomo W6 Mangaliso Dyantyi (junior ban­tam­weights)
Takalani Dangani TKO 3 Vusumzi Bokolo (light­weights)
Thembelani Centhani W6 Thulani Mkwanazi (junior welterweights)

Local fight action con­tin­ues this week­end with the big clash between junior light­weight vet­er­ans Cassius ‘Mr Shy Guy’ Baloyi and Mzonke ‘The Rose of Khayelitsha’ Fana in Johannesburg on Friday night. At stake will be the vacant IBF junior light­weight title and with Baloyi already hav­ing beaten Fana on points just over two years ago, he will fancy his chances of repeat­ing the feat against the ring rusty Fana.

The 35-year-old Baloyi boasts a record of 37–4-1 (19 KO’s) and has held numer­ous world titles in vari­ous weight divi­sions while the 36-year-old Fana (29–4; 12 KO’s) is also a former world cham­pion. Both fight­ers are essen­tially box­ers rather than punch­ers and a closely con­tested tech­nical bout is likely to be on the cards for Friday even­ing. The fight will be tele­vised live on SABC 2 from 10pm.

Teagan comes up trumps in Pietermaritzburg
South Africans Sharlene McGilvray and Teagan O’Keefe (pic­tured) did their coun­try proud at the BMX World Championships in Pietermaritzburg on Sunday when they emerged vic­tori­ous in their respect­ive categories.

O’Keefe, under intense pres­sure to per­form, did not dis­ap­point her fans as she put up a superb dis­play of world class rid­ing to come away with the hon­ours in the junior girls cat­egory. Hometown rider McGillvray pro­duced a stag­ger­ing charge through the field in the final heat to claim the women’s 45-and-over title with Jennifer Strachan of New Zealand and Liesbeth van Jagt of The Netherlands hot on her heels.

“It was great to win in my homet­own, but the pres­sure was not easy to handle,” said McGilvray after­wards. “I took the decision on the start ramp not to touch my brakes,” she added.

Local hos­pit­als were busy through­out the four day event, treat­ing injur­ies suffered dur­ing the prac­tice ses­sions and the motos, includ­ing one leg frac­ture, and a Japanese com­pet­itor who broke both ankles when he mis­judged his land­ing while attempt­ing the tricky jump over the second berm.

At the clos­ing of the cham­pi­on­ships, the International Cycling Union (UCI) was quick to label the event “the best ever” BMX World Champs. “We often say that after a world champs, but this time we can say it hon­estly and truth­fully,” said the UCI head of grav­ity dis­cip­lines Johan Lindstrom.

“It has been fant­astic for BMX, and we are all on a high. All of the riders have had a great time in Pietermaritzburg,” he added. The com­pet­i­tion ended with the formal present­a­tion of the UCI flag to rep­res­ent­at­ives of the city of Stockholm, where the 2011 BMX World Championships will be hosted.

Walters the hero as United down Usuthu
Maritzburg United were crowned Uthukela Mayoral Cup cham­pi­ons when they defeated Premier Soccer League (PSL) rivals AmaZulu 3–2 on pen­al­ties at Settler’s Park Stadium in Ladysmith on Sunday after­noon. United’s Bafana Bafana goal­keeper Shuaib Walters (pic­tured) played a sig­ni­fic­ant part in his team’s vic­tory when he saved three spot kicks after the match ended 1–1 after 90 minutes of reg­u­la­tion time.

Walters saved spot-kicks from Ayanda Dlamini, Litha Ngxabi and Zahuwano Ramson with only Pere Ariwerayi and Tsweu Mokoro man­aging to beat the agile United goal­keeper. The Pietermaritzburg based team’s kicks were con­ver­ted by Rudolf Bester, Mor Diouf and Byrone Hendricks. United’s win would have given them a lot of con­fid­ence ahead of their open­ing PSL clash against AmaZulu on August 29.

South African Links:
2010 World Cup Stadiums
South Africa Attractions
Things to Do in South Africa
South African Hotels
Accommodation in South Africa

Photo Credits:
Photo – Patrick Lambie: Source – www.sulekha.newshopper.com
Photo – Simphiwe Nongqayi: Source – www.fightnews.com
Photo – Nkqubela Gwazela: Source – Gallo Images
Photo – Teagan O’Keefe: Source – Game Plan Media
Photo – Shuaib Walters: Source – www.daylife.com