The 1st XV headed up to Rotorua to play the
National champions in the penultimate round of the Super 8. This fixture is always a very tough encounter
against a very physical side who are in good form and the team prepared well in
anticipation.
Unfortunately the start of the game was far from meeting expectations with two tries leaked in the first ten minutes through a combination of an excellent kicking game from the opposition and a real lack of line speed from our defence. This allowed them to run at us at will and our tackling fell away as a result. We finally managed to get some ball and scored a long range penalty to stem the flood of points but then we let in another easy try and after 20 minutes we were staring down the barrel at 21-3 down. As Rotorua swept onto attack again, our senior players started to stand up and be counted with Te Ariki Te Puni in particular getting through a power of positive work. Our attack started to find its feet and we started to make some good gains through on the edges of the field. This eventually led to a try on the stroke of half time to send us into the break 21-8 down.
Aware of the need for early points in order to stay in the game, the second half saw us start with positive intent which led to an early penalty only to then gift the opposition an intercept try. Undaunted we scored a superb team try of our own after some strong running from James Stratton, Brayden Iose and Wesley Veikoso and the score line closed up again. We then scored another well worked try to get to 28-23 before we once again failed to execute our exit from the kick off to allow them to score. Once again we swept back onto attack and scored a fourth try to close within three points with ten minutes to go. Unfortunately our exit issues remained and we were unable to put Rotorua under any territorial pressure as we tried to run our way out of trouble. They scored their second try from a line out drive to get a comfort margin of 8 points before scoring another to clinch a 43-30 victory.
Our fightback was superb and our confidence grew as the game progressed with some courageous attacking play. Indeed as a team we feel this was one that got away from us as we outscored the opposition in the last 50 minutes of the game. However our poor start and then our inability to consistently create any territorial pressure on the opposition meant that they were able to cancel out the points we scored with points of their own, thus ensuring we had to keep chasing the game. Heading into the Polson banner game on Wednesday we will need to be more clinical around our exits and maintain the attacking momentum we have in order to win the banner – a challenge the team is very excited about.
Points Scorers:
Tries: Mckenzie Tensely 2; James Stratton; Taina Keelan
Conversions: Stewart Cruden 2
Penalties: Stewart Cruden 2
To view pics click on these links:
