The DHL Stormers Bolts fought hard but went down 54-29 against the Vodacom Bulls U20 at Loftus Versfeld on Friday.<\/p>\n
It was the first defeat of the SA Rugby U20 Cup for captain Aden da Costa\u2019s team, following home and away wins against Sharks GEN.<\/p>\n
The home side made a fast start and scored first, but the DHL Stormers Bolts were back on level terms when loosehead prop Jordan Jooste burst through the defence to score from a set move.<\/p>\n
Flyhalf Rayaan Solomons added a penalty to his conversion to give the visitors the lead for the first time, but the hosts hit back with three unanswered tries to take a 26-10 advantage into half-time.<\/p>\n
The DHL Stormers Bolts made a strong start to the second half, with Jooste giving the offload that saw replacement MJ van der Westhuizen score. They kept the pressure on and struck again with a powerful maul, with hooker Xabiso Mkiva crashing over.<\/p>\n
Solomons kicked the conversion from wide on the left to bring it back to a two-point game as they trailed 26-24 with 25 minutes left.<\/p>\n
The home side scored their first try after the break soon afterwards to restore the nine-point lead, but the DHL Stormers Bolts refused to go away and were right back in it when centre Luca Potgieter scored in the corner after getting a great offload from Van der Westhuizen.<\/p>\n
That secured a bonus point, but the Pretoria side hit back with three more tries to pull away and secure victory.<\/p>\n
The scorers:<\/p>\n
For DHL Stormers Bolts:
Tries: Jooste, Van der Westhuizen, Mkiva, Potgieter
Cons: Solomons 3
Pen: Solomons<\/p>\n
DHL Stormers Bolts: 15 Dawid Badenhorst, 14 Jack Benade, 13 Luca Potgieter, 12 Olunje Mehlomakulu, 11 Jordan Steenkamp, 10 Rayaan Solomons, 9 Jayden Brits, 8 Gert Kemp, 7 Aden da Costa (captain), 6 Alutha Wesi, 5 Alexander Smith, 4 Ethan Combrink, 3 Zak Hickman, 2 Xabiso Mikva, 1 Jordan Jooste.
Replacements: 16 Lukho Mtwana, 17 Bulela Mbala, 18 Unaye Mndau, 19 Dominic Sesink-Clee, 20 MJ van der Westhuizen, 21 Wihan Kotze, 22 Tyrone Gombe, 23 Samuel Badenhorst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The DHL Stormers Bolts fought hard but went down 54-29 against the Vodacom Bulls U20 at Loftus Versfeld…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21057],"tags":[21073,21072,13546],"class_list":["post-76610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dhl","tag-deutsche-post","tag-dhl","tag-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}