Classic Springboks 44 Classic Eagles 3

Debutant Charles Mayeza scored a hat-trick of tries as the Classic Springboks started their World Rugby Classic title defence with a huge triumph over Classic Eagles on Sunday.

On a soggy National Sports Centre pitch, Mayeza’s tries formed part of the eight recorded by the South Africans, with two of them converted. The champions were solid at the back as they did not concede a try, with the United States points coming from a penalty.

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Josh Strauss, the South African captain, was delighted to get the win in difficult conditions.

“It was tiring at the start and that's why we tried to play a bit of a kicking game with the weather,” Strauss told The Royal Gazette.

“As forwards, we haven’t trained for a long time. It tapped our legs a little bit, so I think in the dry weather it would have been a bit more of a flowing game.

“But we enjoyed it, it was nice to get stuck in. You really get into it after the first few hits and then you start really going.

“The ball was really slippery and it was very tough to run on to. In contact, it got stripped quite quickly, someone just punched the ball and it went like a bar of soap, which is why we had a lot of scrums.

“Luckily, the scrums are uncontested, otherwise it would have been a tough day at the office.”

Colin Hawley, the US captain, thought it was always going to be hard playing against the reigning champions.

“We knew we were coming into a really top South Africa side,” he said.

“We had our systems and our skills let us down a little bit, but we feel like we can play with South Africa and everybody else here. We’re going to get better from this match, but hats off to South Africa, they’re fantastic.

“We love coming here and seeing their brand of rugby and we just got to get back to playing ours.

“We feel like our defence let us down on the interior, but we’ve had some pretty awesome moments on the outside.

“We stood with South Africa in the first half and they had some kick passes over the top. We actually let ourselves down in our systems, but if we play that first half of rugby, we're going to do great in the rest of the tournament.

“We have Hadleigh Tucker, a Bermudian and he had some great moments out there. If we can set up a good platform on the interior like we wanted to, I think we can actually run with them on the outside.

“We're just going to get out here and play the Eagles brand of rugby and do our best game in and game out.”

South Africa drew first blood four minutes into the encounter when Lionel Cronje’s cross-field kick resulted in fullback Zane Kirchner dotting down for the first try. A clean break to cross the whitewash by Bom Samaai extended the lead to 10-0.

Keegan Engelbrecht booted in a penalty goal for the Americans to get their only points of the match.

Mayeza profited from Cronje’s ingenuity to get the first of his tries, with the successful kick by Fred Zeilinga taking the Springboks lead to 17-3 at the break.

Japie Nel added a fourth try at the start of the second half and Andries Coetzee added the extras with a successful kick.

Cronje offloaded to Mayeza to score his second for the match and Coetzee notched the sixth five-pointer for the champions.

A perfectly executed move by the South African backline, engineered by the tenacious Morgan Newman, allowed the 35-year-old Mayeza to complete his hat-trick.

Cronje profited from a mistake by US wing Matthew Lancor, who gave the ball away, for the fly half to add his name on the scoresheet with an unconverted try.

South African finished one man short after Bernard Le Roux was sent to the sin bin for retaliation two minutes before the end.

In matches played on Saturday, the first day of the tournament, Argentina Legends defeated Italian Classic 12-0 while Classic Canada saw off Classic Lions 24-19.

Fly half Aaron McLelland was outstanding for the Canadians, with his individual brilliance on display in the two tries he scored to see off the determined Lions.

Canada enjoyed a 17- 7 lead going into half-time. The Lions fought back with 12 unanswered points to go 19-17 in front, before McLelland ensured the Canadians victory.