1st XV v Wairarapa College - Match Report
The second round of the Hurricanes Festival saw the 1st XV travel to Napier to play Wairarapa College. Wairarapa competed well against Hastings the week before and so the team knew that they would have to play for the full 70 minutes to get over top of them.
The game started with an easy turnover from the kick off to allow the opposition free access into our half. A fairly steady flow of penalties for having a dominant scrum, offside and breakdown play continued to gift Wairarapa possession. This allowed them to open the scoring with a penalty but at least gave us the chance to get out of our half. Possession began to turn back our way but while we were starting to string some phases together, the quality of the ball was slow with some effective play from the opposing openside flanker in particular. Gradually, however, our threat identification and our body height issues started to resolve and we enjoyed the best period of the first half with some enterprising and direct play. Unfortunately during this period we were to lose our co-captain Tyler Laubscher to a dislocated shoulder as he was making a surge to the line. We scored a penalty and a try in the second quarter but the finish to the first half was messy with handling errors from both sides, creating a fairly stop-start affair.
The second half saw a realisation that we needed to ensure we earned this victory rather than waiting for the opposition to roll over and we became far more direct in our running and attacking with width and speed. The running and offloads of our tight forwards in particular were proving a handful and kept pushing the tiring Wairarapa players back. Off the back of this play the backs and loosies were able to make good breaks out wide and we were able to capitalize on this play by scoring good team tries. Errors at the kickoff by the opposition then allowed us to gather more momentum as we went back to back with two quick tries straight from midfield scrums. In the end we put in a second half performance that was a pleasing step up from previous weeks as the team starts to become more and more confident with its style of play. The final score was 39-3 with five second half tries.
Points Scorers:
Tries: Sam Stewart x 2
James Woodmass
Mackenzie Tansley
James Stratton
Conversions: Stewart Cruden x 3
Penalty: Stewart Cruden