FIXTURES 2020 : RECONCILIATION TIME !

The Donkeys return !  After a brief hiatus, HTS Drostdy, pictured here in action against
Monument at Wildeklawer 2019, will be playing both the Paarl heavyweights
in the Winelands' capital again in 2020.  (photo: Renier de Villiers)

The serious part of the 2019 rugby season has only just been completed - and in what style ! - and this site is already looking forward to all the thrills and spills awaiting schoolboy rugby followers in what is shaping up to be a bumper 2020.

It would be wonderful to ascribe the burying of old hatchets divulged below as a by-product of Saturday’s sensational Springbok performance, but, in reality, the renewal of several old rivalries in the Western Cape programme for next year was done and dusted a while before 2 November.

The immediate result is the restoration of a handful of top-flight match-ups that local cognoscenti have had to make do without for varying lengths of time.  It seems that cool heads have prevailed all round, in the process providing quite the most appetising top-flight fixture list in many a year.

The first of these see Paarl Boys’ High hosting both Wynberg (18 April 2020) and SACS (18 July 2020) at Brug Street.

Last year’s WP Premier A programme just wasn’t the same when the two southern suburbs schools refused to play the Galpille.  Cool heads have prevailed and these two elder statesmen will bring their hordes of die-hard supporters out to the Winelands to enjoy these clashes.

Next, there seems to have been a marked thawing of animosity between the two Paarl schools and HTS Drostdy, a powerhouse, who, despite being a mere 50 km away over the mountains, might just as well have been in Gauteng for all the attention they got from Gym and Boishaai. 

Now the Donkeys will come to Paarl to play Brug Street on 30 May 2020 and at the Jan Kriel ground on 25 July 2020.

The last reinstated fixture worth mentioning will feature Outeniqua at home to Boland Landbou in George on 9 May 2020, just over eight years since the Quaggas beat the Farmers 27-21 at the same venue, courtesy of two tries by Duhan van der Merwe and a third by Leighton Eksteen, who added three conversions and two penalties.

The cost of resuming the rivalry ?  Landbou had to forego one of their meaningless friendlies against WP Premier B opposition.

And that’s not all ?  Stellenberg will finally get the chance to play Paarl Boys’ High on 25 July 2020.  In Durbanville, nogal !  Careful what you wish for, Jade Brigade !

The greatest positive one can take from all this is that people who had been intransigent in their views have finally been persuaded to cast aside the blinkers and consider matters from all sides’ point of view.

Please note : What you see in the relevant section of the site is not yet the finished article as several Boland regional league fixtures have to be added.