KUCHING: As expected, Kuching secondary school rugby giants Kolej DPAH Abdillah and SMKA SHOAW will lock horns in today’s final of the MSSM Kuching Inter-School 15 A-side Rugby Championship.
The heavyweights simply steam-rollered over their opponents in yesterday’s semi-finals, with Kolej DPAH Abdillah trouncing SM Sains Kuching 78-0, which was the championship’s highest score, and SMKA SHOAW blanking SMK St Joseph 44-0.
While SMKA SHOAW are looking to wrest the title from Kolej DPAH Abdillah, the latter are targeting to win their third title in a row.
“It will be a 50-50 game tomorrow and I believe the team that have the better mental strength and commit the less mistakes will win the final,” said Kolej DPAH Abdillah coach Zamzy Abdul Rahman.
“Both teams have their own tactics and strategies, their strengths and weaknesses and other factors like game temperament, crowd support, pitch condition and the weather will affect the outcome of the game,” he added.
Zamzy said he would not put too much pressure on his boys but instead let them play their game.
“It will be a good game and we’ll give them a good fight to defend the title,” he said.
On the other hand, SHOAW coach Zulkaranainhisham Sarbini feels that today’s final would be a very interesting game although Kolej have the upper hand as most of their senior players are still in the team.
The SHOAW team is made up of seven form five students, eight form four students and ten form three students.
“As I have said earlier, we are now rebuilding our team and our present team is still developing. But they are doing well and most of my forwards are from form three. Out of the 10, six have started in the first 15,” he said, adding that he hoped his boys could spring a surprise.
“It is going to be a cracker where both teams are playing rugby technically and tactically in the right way. This should be the way that other schools play rugby.”
“If we can contain their key player Christopher Joshua and tighten up our defence, we may have chance of winning the final,” said Zulkaranainhisham.
For the record, SHOAW had dominated the championship since 2000, winning the event 11 consecutive times until they lost to Kolej in 2010 and 2011.
Zulkaranainhisham said SHOAW and Kolej were always in the final because both have good training programmes and committed coaching staff.
“We do our training all-year round and we also competing in a number of exposure tournaments in Semenanjung Malaysia like MCKK Premier 7s, Curtin 7s, Cobra 10s and KGV 10s,” he added.
This event is jointly organised by SHOAW and the Sarawak Education Department and aimed at selecting players for the MSSM Inter-Division meet to be held in Betong from Jan 28-31.