With physicality being the more dominant factor, and flair taking a backseat, the Green side held more of the aces as they charged to a 25-9 win over the Gold team in the Springbok Showdown at Newlands on Saturday night.

Gold’s half-back pairing of Damian Willemse and scrumhalf Herschel Jantjies posed the more settled combination, being provincial partners, but Green’s No 9 Sanele Nohamba caught the most attention with his livewire service and put a lot of pressure on the more fancied Jantjies.

After the initial bright start from Gold, it was Green who took control of the set pieces and gained the ascendancy at scrum and lineout time, where Green’s lock JD Schickerling caught the eye, which created early scoreboard pressure.

After a try-less first half, the first ‘try’ of the game came early in the second half in the form of a penalty try after Gold’s Willemse was yellow-carded for interfering with Green wing Yaw Penxe and preventing a certain try.

With Green scoring all three tries of the game – a lack of sparkling backline play being the one big disappointment of the contest – the first real try came through Green captain Siya Kolisi when he twisted over from a rolling maul.

Gold seemed to ignite more second-half spark when they introduced players from the bench like flyhalf Curwin Bosch, prop Carlu Sadie and flank Vincent Tshituka, while hooker Dylan Richardson created real impact after replacing Scarra Ntubeni.

Earlier, the first half had struggled to get going, and the stop-start nature was probably attributed to combinations still settling.

Gold’s Willemse missed three of his four attempts and Green’s solid-looking No 10 Elton Jantjies missed just one of his three, but a lack of execution resulted in a half-time score of just 6-3 to Green.

Scorers

Green: Tries: Penalty try, Siya Kolisi, Juarno Augustus. Conversion: Kade Wolhuter (1). Penalties: Elton Jantjies (2).

Gold: Penalties: Damian Willemse (1), Curwin Bosch (2).