After their exciting tour to Argentina and Chile Trintyhouse arrived back at OR Tambo Airport on Friday. They send their report.

They say that nothing lasts forever and while that may be true of teams' winning streaks; it doesn't apply to the courage and pride of this squad of young Trinityhouse men on tour in.

This evening saw the final two matches of their South American tour, played against Chile's representative teams; our Second XV vs the Under-19 Development Team and the First XV vs the Under-19 National Team. 

The injury situation had marginally improved and so we had exactly 15 men per team and four players unavailable.

Outweighed by older and stronger opposition our Seconds tackled themselves to a standstill and trailed 22-10 at half-time with Ross van Coller scoring a try, converting it and kicking a penalty.  The final score of 62-10 belies the huge effort from the White Sox. There was nothing left in the tank at the end of this and four previous tough matches and not a dry eye in the huddle after the final whistle. And then they had to bench for the Firsts. Huge respect boys...

The Firsts started at breakneck speed with Gary Philips intercepting and scoring in the first two minutes and that's how the match continued! Chile hit right back to go 14-7 up in the blink of an eye only for Matthew Gouldie to tie the score at 14-all with just ten minutes played! I don't have the words to properly describe the pace and sheer end-to-end spectacle of this match.

Kyle Steyn goaled a penalty to nose the Wolves 17-14 ahead only for Chile to hit back with a goal and go 21-17 up, before Brendan le Roux scored a try that Kyle converted to a goal and made it 24-21. Mention must be made of the superb Chilean goal-kicking with their flyhalf nailing conversions from close to touch every time and matching those with his peerless touch kicking.

He missed for the only time when Chile scored a try on the stroke of halftime to retake the lead at 26-24.

As we chipped ahead on attack after half-time, Chile gathered against the run of play and ran it in from our 10m line to lead 33-24!

Chile kicked a penalty then scored their final try on the blind-side to secure a well-earned 43-24 victory.

We have no complaints: this was a well-coached and talented outfit that hardly made any mistakes, scrummaged like Argentinians, retained possession beautifully and handled as if they had smeared glue on their palms. The Wolves were again superb in the maul and at lineout time and tackled like Trojans.

And so ends a wonderful experience for all of us, parents, siblings, staff and players; as we prepare to fly home tomorrow, ash cloud permitting!

There is no disgrace in these defeats and our boys return with heads held high and filled with rugby and life-memories that will never be forgotten.

From Rory Steyn