Trio for Craven Week Festival

a tough pool where they are set to take on the Golden Lions in their opening game of the rugby jamboree.

Chareka, Dustin and Evans were the top players for St John’s Preparatory School last year where they were outstanding in the schools rugby fixtures before they graduated to St John’s College.

Chareka believes they have some good coaches and a strong squad for this year’s Craven Week festival.

“We believe our team is good and we are glad to have good coaches who have been making sure that we do well during our training sessions and we might win all our matches,” said Chareka.

However, the Zimbabwe Under-14 side will be hoping for a change of fortunes and the three young players believe they have the potential after their fine performance at the primary school level.

The technical trio of Bryan Radimeyer, assistant coach Orlando Fenandes and team manager Tan Dinhidza are hopeful Zimbabwe will come back with some good results.

Pike said he was happy to be part of the squad and was hoping for the best performance.

“I am very happy to be part of the team and I hope we are going to win and make our country proud,” Pike said.

Zimbabwe’s performance in their opening game against the Golden Lions will determine their next opponents from their eight-team pool that also includes SWD Eagles, Valke, Pumas, Griffons, Border CD Border, the Free State Cheetahs and bitter rivals Namibia.

The other pool is made up of Blue Bulls, Boland, Leopards, Eastern Province, Limpopo Blue Bulls, KwaZulu Natal, Western Province and Griquas.

Last year, Zimbabwe lost all their games, first falling to NW Leopards 56-0, before they lost 0-34 to the Free State Cheetahs while a 0-38 defeat to Mpumalanga Pumas made sure they returned home without scoring any points.

This means that of all the three Zimbabwe junior sides that travelled to South Africa for their respective weeks, the Under-17 side came out tops with two wins out of three games, losing to Namibia on the last day while the Under-18s won only one of their three games against Border CD.