PNBHS NEWS

1st beat Lindisfarne in season opener

 
Picture of Dominic King
1st beat Lindisfarne in season opener
by Dominic King - Saturday, 19 March 2016, 5:27 PM
 

The 1st XV Training Squad were fortunate enough to play the Curtain Raiser to the Hurricanes v Force game on Friday 18th March.  The squad was a mixture of old and new with players who had trained hard over the preseason earning an opportunity to showcase their playing abilities.

The game started rather ominously with a kick off not taken cleanly allowing Lindisfarne to earn a lineout on our five metre line.  This resulted in a well worked lineout drive that ended in a try – first blood to the visitors.  The game continued to be scrappy with both teams struggling to gain any continuity with inaccuracies at the breakdown and handling errors meaning play struggled to go beyond two phases. We started to win the territory battle however and with this built pressure on the opposition who were struggling to clear their own line.  Two converted tries to us were the direct result of this pressure including a classic 8-9 play at scrum time that put Ethan Helu-Makasini away to score his first try for the season.  Lindisfarne replied with another drive over try from a 5 metre lineout.  14-10 at halftime

The second half was a slight improvement on the first in particular around the defensive intensity that we were showing.  Our set piece started to show some real dominance on their ball and this led to disruption of their attacking play.  By contrast a steady stream of ball meant we strung some phases together through the middle part of the half and this allowed our edge runners to show their attacking prowess, Brayden Iose especially effective in this area scoring a hat trick of tries.  Potentially more points could have been scored but typical preseason handling and decision making errors cut some promising raids short. Lindisfarne scored an intercept try right on half time to make the scoreline a 26-17 victory to us.

All in all a satisfactory start to the season with the effectiveness of the lineout especially pleasing.  There was good endeavour to get attacking flow going and the defense improved as the game progressed.  The impact that some of the newer players bought when they were inserted was also exciting – the performance of young year 11 Harry Newman in particular caught the eye and bodes well for the future. 

Thanks to the staff, parents and PB Nation supporters that came out to support us, we hope to see you at more fixtures as the season progresses.

Points Scorers:

Tries: Brayden Iose      3 tries; Ethan Helu-Makasini 1 try

Conversions: Stewart Cruden 3

Click here for  Pictures of the match