The home team, Botswana, managed to hold on to their first half lead to beat Zambia 23-15 in the second match of the day.
“We didn’t get the result we were looking for but we know how to fix what went wrong, particularly in the first half and we’ll be working hard ahead of Wednesday’s match, and we’ll come back stronger” said a disappointed Nigerian captain David Akinluyi after the match.
After a simple opening ceremony, in which the Nigerians were the only team to sing their country’s anthem when the Botswana armed forces band played all the national anthems they took to the field against a well drilled Mauritian team who had brought in 16 players from England. Last year Mauritius beat Nigeria 42-10 in Nigeria’s only test of the year in a chilly Johannesburg.
The game played in perfect conditions for rugby opened with both teams fairly nervous at the big occasion. The Nigerians were bigger and physically stronger than the Mauritians but with only five training sessions together as a squad, but with no opportunity to have a practice match, the team struggled to find continuity in the opening 20 minutes.
In the 6th minute with Nigeria pressing hard on the Mauritian 5 metre line Nigeria flipped the ball off the ground which was intercepted by the Mauritian wing who sprinted the length of the pitch for the opening try of the tournament. The try was converted and Nigeria was down 7 nil in as many minutes.
Robert Boulle, the Mauritius full back added another three points after Nigeria collapsed the scrum on their own 22 metre line giving away a penalty. 10 nil.
The game was swinging from one end of the pitch to the other when Mauritius kicked ahead and Nigeria dotted down behind their own line.
The ensuing drop out went out on the full and from the resulting scrum the Mauritian 8th man picked up from the back and went to the blind side, the ref accidentally got in the way of Nigeria’s defense before the number 8 passed to the wing who scored under the posts for a converted try. 17 nil.
The ref subsequently apologised to Akinluyi, the captain but didn’t reverse his decision. Nigeria’s scrum was struggling to settle and gave away another penalty on the 35th minute when the front row collapsed.
Up stepped the metronomic Boule and knocked over another easy penalty. Other teams would have dropped their heads and given up. Not this team of feisty young men though.
With the clock ticking down to half time Nigeria got their first points on the board when Tiwa Obisesan, playing fly half, put over Nigeria’s first penalty.
After half time Nigeria kicked up a gear and strong running was getting them over the gain line (the imaginary line drawn between both sets of forwards during a scrum, ruck, maul or line-out).
Particularly impressive was the open side flank Ejike Uzoigbe who plays his club rugby for Worthing in England. The scrum started to get more cohesion too giving the back some front foot ball to play with. A definite crowd favourite was the man mountain Nsa “Junior” Harrison.
For such a big man he is remarkably agile and fast on his feet making him a human wrecking ball. He was often in the thick of things in the tight loose and made one break faking to kick a grubber through before breaking three tackles before off-loading to the support which went over the whitewash putting narrowing the gap to 8 points.
Four minutes later the ref advanced a Mauritius penalty 10 metres when one of the Nigerian forwards supposedly talked back after he had awarded a penalty. The reset penalty was now in striking range of the deadly accurate Boulle who slotted it between the posts.
Up 26-15 with five minutes to go Mauritius were under intense pressure with Nigeria pressing hard to a try. It wasn’t exactly the siege of Mafikeng (the Boer war siege of Mafikeng fifty kilometres up the road) but it wasn’t far from it.
The pressure told and Mauritius went off their feet at a ruck on their 22, Nigeria took a quick tap penalty and stormed Doyin Layade stormed over beside the posts which was converted by the increasingly confident Obisesan. An obviously gutted Steve Lewis, Nigeria’s coach, said there were many positives to be taken from the match,
“The most encouraging aspect of the performance was the manner in which our boys reacted to adversity. Down 20-3 many teams would have folded but the lads knuckled down and fought back strongly scoring three tries to two. Another few minutes and the result could have gone our way.”
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