The University of Namibia (UNAM) Rugby Club kicked off its 2022 Namibia Premier League season on a positive note after collecting maximum points against a resilient Western Suburbs at the UNAM Stadium on Saturday.
UNAM who won the 2021 Namibia Rugby Premier League beat one of their fierce rivals, Western Suburbs 37-25 in a game of two halves at a packed UNAM stadium.
Suburbs opened the scoring as early as the fifth minute through Justin Nel who scored a penalty and in the 12th minute his teammate Tjingairi Katjivi ran in a try for the visitors, but Nel missed the conversion as the score remained at 8-0 for Suburbs.
It took home team UNAM 15 minutes to find themselves on the scoreboard through a penalty by Delron Brandt and in the 25th minute, UNAM capitalised on Suburbs’ handling errors as Prince !Gaoseb ran in their first try of the match and Brandt missed the conversion.
With the score levelled at eight, all UNAM continued to capitalise on Suburbs handling mistakes with Brandt scoring their third try of the match which he converted to increase their score to 15-8 for UNAM in the 27th minute.
Suburbs’ Deveroux Jansen was yellow carded for a foul play on Brandt after he scored the try.
With the match approaching the halftime mark, brilliant delivery from Lorenzo Louis saw Shareave Titus run in a third try in the 36th minute while Darryl Wellman made things impossible for their opponents with his team’s fourth try and Brandt converted both for a halftime score of 29-8 for UNAM.
In the second half, UNAM continued where they ended off in the first half with Oderich Mouton scoring a try that was not converted but he managed to score a penalty later in the game for their 37 points scoreline.
Meanwhile, the visitors had a better second half running in three tries after brilliant passing saw them go through a resilient UNAM defence on the day.
Their tries were scored by Gino Wilson (two tries) while Vakomboka Kamboo scored the other try. Only one of the tries was converted by Nel who also missed a penalty for Suburbs as the match ended 37-25.
Other results for matches played in Rehoboth, Swakopmund and Grootfontein on Saturday saw Wanderers thrashing Reho Falcons 61-3, Kudus beating Rehoboth 32-15 while Grootfontein beat United 38-7.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
