With both teams committed to attacking rugby, the Cheetahs played with more cohesion and made fewer mistakes on a slippery field.
They continued a late-season surge which has made them one of the form teams in the competition after a poor start in which they lost eight of their first nine matches.
It was another frustrating game for the Rebels, who showed flair on attack but allowed too many turnovers and proved porous on defence as they leaked five tries to the Bloemfontein-based team, taking their tally of tries conceded to 62 in 13 matches.
Rebels showed their intentions early when they opted to kick for touch instead of trying for a penalty goal in the fourth minute.
It almost paid off when left wing Luke Rooney just failed to beat the defence to a stab kick into the in-goal area by centre Mark Gerrard.
A fine break by Gerrard kept the Australian side on the attack, but the Cheetahs scored from their first foray into the Rebels 22 when a powerful scrum set up the first of two tries for centre Corne Uys.
Left wing Rayno Benjamin charged down an attempted clearance kick by Rooney for the second try.
The Rebels hit back when hooker Ged Robinson nipped through the middle of a line-out in a well-worked planned move but the Cheetahs led 21-7 at half-time when hooker and captain Adriaan Strauss forced his way over.
Uys and Strauss added tries in the second half while the Rebels replied with a try by Gerrard and a last-minute penalty try.
An otherwise cleanly fought match was marred five minutes from the end when Benjamin was red carded for head butting Rebels captain Stirling Mortlock, who was given a yellow card for retaliation.
Cheetahs full-back Riaan Viljoen was yellow carded in the last minute for an early tackle which resulted in the Rebels' penalty try.
Mortlock said the Super 15 newcomers had learnt a lot from their first trip to South Africa.
"It's been really positive for us as a group. Unfortunately, it hasn't shown on the field," Mortlock said.
"We've got no points from two games and we've let ourselves down a lot of the time."
- AFP
Tags: sport, rugby-union, super-14, australia, vic, melbourne-3000, south-africa First posted May 22, 2011 06:22:00
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