Teams for the 2018 Kearsney Rugby Festival confirmed
The participating schools at the 2018 Standard Bank Kearsney Easter Rugby Festival have been confirmed.
Three local KwaZulu-Natal teams will participate this year: Glenwood High School, Durban High School and hosts Kearsney College.
They will join HTS Middelburg, Welkom Gimnasium, Pretoria Boys High and Hoërskool Noord-Kaap (Kimberley); the Eastern Cape’s Dale College (King William’s Town), Queen’s College (Queenstown), Selborne College (East London) and Hoërskool Framesby (Port Elizabeth); together with HTS Drostdy from Worcester.
The festival takes place over three play days: Thursday 29th March, Saturday 31st and Monday 2nd April. It promises exciting running rugby, set in a family environment on the Kearsney College campus at Botha’s Hill, between Durban and Pietermaritzburg.
Many gifted players have been discovered by talent scouts at previous Kearsney rugby festivals and they have now progressed to playing for the Springboks, SA Sevens, Sharks and other provincial teams.
Etienne Fynn, head of the Sharks Academy, said the festival played an important role in exposing the quality of available young talent from around the country.
"The Sharks Academy is proud to be associated with the Kearsney Easter Rugby Festival. The length of our involvement is testament to its on-going high standards and continued focus on the camaraderie and ethos of the game. Only at these festivals is the weekly grind of school derbies removed, and players can be allowed the freedom to play the game without that very obvious pressure,” he said.
“We have had many players come through the festival and go onto play at the highest levels of the game. Once again, we will be offering three bursaries for 2019 which we hope will serve as motivation for these young men to play to the best of their abilities at the festival.”
Fynn said that talent scouts from The Sharks and Sharks Academy would be on the lookout during the three play days of exciting fast-paced action.