Four pre-season games to serve as warm-up for 2019 Gold Cup for Poorte
The club has four pre-season fixtures lined up for the run-up to the 2019 SARU Gold Cup.
With big plans on the horizon for 2019, Roodepoort Rugby Club has four warm-up games scheduled for the run-up to the 2019 SARU Gold Cup.
Poorte enjoyed a highly successful and resurgent 2018 Pirates Grand Challenge that saw them end the year as the top open amateur club within the Golden Lions Rugby Union. They narrowly missed out on the overall PGC title to North West University (Pukke), due to a late drop goal from Pukke’s BF van Staden, with the score ending on 26–25 to the varsity boys.
The dramatic ending didn’t prevent Poorte from qualifying for the Gold Cup however, as they will return to the national club competition this year, for the first time since 2014, when they finished as runners-up. They will join 15 other teams for South Africa’s flagship national championship for non-university clubs, alongside 2017 finalists College Rovers, former champions Newrak Impalas of Rustenburg and Durbanville-Bellville.
The Gold Cup has also been a huge draw card for club rugby players who are seeking a new club, which has led to Poorte having a rather large pool of players from which they’ll have to choose their Gold Cup squad. They’ll only be allowed to select a maximum of 10 new players who didn’t play for the club in the 2018 season, and will be making use of four pre-season games to piece together the squad to carry the club’s hopes.
The first of these games will be against Sishen Rugby Club on 9 February, with Vaal Pukke to follow on 16 February, then the University of Pretoria’s High Performance Centre side on 23 February, and finally Raiders Rugby Club on 2 March to close out the pre-season fixtures. The Gold Cup will commence the week thereafter, on 9 March, with the first set of group fixtures.
The 2019 PGC is scheduled to begin on 6 April, which coincides with the dates of the Gold Cup semi-finals, while the final will be on 13 April. If Poorte were to make it through to either of the two, then the first team will begin its 2019 PGC campaign at a later stage.
Poorte will sadly be without club stalwart Byron Godfrey this year however, as he has hung up his boots to place focus on his family life.
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