JONATHAN COOK
at St Albans in Pretoria

An on-fire South Africa Under-18 boys hockey team drew 2-2 with the brilliant Australia Schoolboys side in the third and final Test at St Alban's in Pretoria Friday night.

The Aussie juniors, widely recognised as the best schoolboy team to grace South Africa's shores, were kept under constant pressure by the dynamic SA forwards in the first half and amongst a hatful of opportunities, Western Province’s James Drummond and Grant Glutz of KZN Inland scored for the home country while the dangerous James Knee got on the scoresheet for the Antipodeans.

Drummond roofed an absolute beauty of a penalty corner drag flick while Glutz tapped in from close after fine SA combination play.

Trailing 2-1 at the break, the second half was end to end stuff played with an incredibly high energy that had the sizeable crowd on the edge of their seats, but it was only the Australians who managed to breach the goalline, when brilliant individual skills led to Harry Page’s equaliser.

SA goalkeeper Hendrik Kroukamp of Free State made some superb saves while Aussie number one James Olsen made fewer direct saves but was the recipient of a slew of shots at his goals, yet a number of SA’s opportunities slammed into the side-netting on the wrong side of the posts.

On another day, pacy striker Ignatius Malgraff might have hit a hat-trick, but for once the talented Amathole-Border boy did not have the hockey gods on his side.

Australia won the series 2-0 after 3-2 and 4-3 wins in the thrilling first and second Tests.

SA VS AUSTRALIA U18 SERIES TEAMS

SA U18
1 Hendrik Kroukamp
2 Kirwin Christoffels
4 Cerezo Comerasamy
5 Michael Mulder
6 Tim Guise-Brown
7 Ross Gonsalves
8 Nicholas Berichon
9 Ignatius Malgraff
10 James Drummond
11 Mkhululi Calana
12 Dayne Samboer
13 Kewan Harries
14 Chad Cairncross
16 Bernard Greybe
17 Michael Watson (capt)
18 Sumanth Sunkari
19 Dylan Swanepoel
20 Grant Glutz
Coach: Brendon Carolan
Manager: Mark Jenneker

Australia Schoolboys
1 Michael Menzie
2 Luke Tynes
3 Samuel Liles
4 Matthew Munnik
5 Stuart Shepherd
6 Jack Elliott (capt)
7 Shayne Smith
8 Nicholas Hill
9 Jadium Rees
10 James Knee
11 Ross Hall
12 Harry Page
13 Kyle Gildea
21 Tom Craig
22 Domonic Hird
23 Brendon Horner
24 James Olsen
Coach: David Audesho