Campaign on the veldt

Cpl Todd Bowerman, 3/4 Cav Regt takes a swing at a fast ball during a recent match with 1RAR. Cpl Bowerman scored 33 runs in the game.

A player faces down some aggressive bowling. Photos by Cpl Jason Weeding

AUSTRALIA will take on the might of South Africa's Defence Force when the Army's rugby union team tours during the next two weeks.

The tour is the first time an Army rugby team has toured South Africa.

The 30-member squad will face games with a regional Defence Force team in Pretoria and in Cape Town.

Contingent Commander Lt-Col Scott Warr said the opposing team would not be exclusively soldiers because of the way their Defence Force is structured.

"Their system is based on regional Defence teams, although they occasionally send a single-service team away," he said.

The squad will also conduct coaching clinics in Cape Town at the 9th South African Infantry Battalion and at a troubled youth academy.

"The base is next to a township of close to a million people, so we'll run clinics on the barracks itself for local school kids."

"The troubled youth academy is a new initiative by the South African Government and is a military-style youth life-skills development program over 12 weeks."

"Part of the program is sport, so we saw we could meet our aims as well as theirs - the clinic will take place on their Human Rights Day on March 21."

Lt-Col Warr said the South Africans had been pretty cagey about the standard of their players ahead of the Australian Army team's arrival.

"We saw one of the club teams in Pretoria and they're very big boys - they looked very capable."

"Pretoria is their highest concentration of Defence personnel, with all of their service headquarters and most of their training institutions, so I expect we'll have a real game on our hands there."

By Cpl Jonathan Garland