{"id":70854,"date":"2025-04-26T14:55:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T12:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssschoolsplus.co.za\/?p=70854"},"modified":"2025-04-26T14:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T12:55:18","slug":"classy-sa-u21-men-claim-junior-africa-cup-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/?p=70854","title":{"rendered":"Classy SA u21 Men claim Junior Africa Cup gold"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jaydon
Jaydon Brooker was named Player of the Tournament in the Men’s section at the Junior Africa Cup. Photo: SAHA – South African Hockey Association<\/a><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aggressive, dominant, and ruthless are three words that can be used to describe the South Africa Men’s u21<\/strong> side after they thumped Namibia<\/strong> 5-0 in the final of the Junior Africa Cup,<\/strong> in Windhoek, on Friday night.<\/p>\n

South Africa breezed through the pool stages and maintained their unbeaten run by coming out on top in the final, too.<\/p>\n

They were clinical from the outset, accurate in front of goal, and barely conceded, not that they had to do a lot of defending.<\/p>\n

Under the guidance of head coach Guy Elliott<\/strong>, the SA boys kicked off their campaign with lopsided victories against Zambia<\/strong> (12-3) and Namibia<\/strong> (8-0).<\/p>\n

Those were followed by a 7-1 thumping of Zimbabwe<\/strong>, which secured South Africa a place at the FIH Junior Men’s World Cup<\/strong>, which takes place in Chennai and Madurai, India, later this year.<\/p>\n

Not even South Africa’s traditional African rivals, Egypt, could slow down Elliott’s charges, with SA cruising to a 5-0 win. It was a different story against Kenya, with South Africa scoring only a 2-1 victory. By then, they had already secured a place in the final against the hosts.<\/p>\n

With the title on the line, it was one-way traffic at the Davin Trustco Hockey Stadium<\/strong> as South Africa ran rampant against the hosts.<\/p>\n

They dominated the opening chukka and opened the scoring after some slick interplay between Carlon Mentoor<\/strong> and Reuben Sendzul<\/strong>, with the former Paul Roos Gimnasium<\/strong> captain converting to make it 1-0.<\/p>\n

With two minutes remaining in the chukka, former Jeppe High School for Boys<\/strong> stalwart Jaydon Brooker<\/a> <\/strong>converted from the top of the D to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n

The South Africans continued to pile on the pressure in the third chukka, making a whopping nine circle entries.<\/p>\n

Out of those, they converted only one, but it was that man, Brooker, again, who scored a thunderbolt of a drag flick to make it 3-0 at the halfway point.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:
Photo: SAHA – South African Hockey Association<\/a><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The message at halftime was simple from coach Elliot and his staff, and that was to continue outworking and outsmarting their opponents.<\/p>\n

That’s exactly what they did, controlling the tempo of the game, and they were rewarded with a successful PC flick from former Clifton College<\/strong> captain Ross Montgomery<\/strong>, who finally got onto the scoresheet after numerous attempts.<\/p>\n

The boys in green and gold completed the drubbing in the final chukka.<\/p>\n

Wynberg Boys’ High<\/strong> product Viwe Mbatha created space in the circle, where he received the ball and tapped in for a simple finish, which made the final score 5-0.<\/p>\n

South Africa completed the tournament having scored an impressive 41 goals while conceding only five.<\/p>\n

Dan Dillion<\/strong> was named Goalkeeper of the Tournament, while Brooker was both the Top Goal Scorer and Player of the Tournament.<\/p>\n

RESULTS<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa 12-3 Zambia
\nSouth Africa 8-0 Namibia
\nSouth Africa 7-1 Zimbabwe
\nSouth Africa 5-0 Egypt
\nSouth Africa 2-1 Kenya
\nSouth Africa 5-0 Namibia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aggressive, dominant, and ruthless are three words that can be used to describe the South Africa Men’s u21 side after they thumped Namibia 5-0 in the final of the Junior Africa Cup, in Windhoek, on Friday night. South Africa breezed through the pool stages and maintained their unbeaten run by coming out on top in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":70856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/70856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.ssschoolsplus.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}