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The Wellington Samoans players after their match in Wainuiomata on Saturday against Wairarapa-Bush. They are on the road this weekend for their second game.
Lunchtime edition – updates expected throughout the day.
More Finals coming up this weekend, in the school and club rugby competitions.
There are four club rugby finals across two club grades this coming Saturday, with the Premier and Premier 2 college final on Saturday and the Premiership decider on Sunday.
In the U85kg grade, Tawa play OBU (Division 1) and HOBM play Johnsonville (Division 2) and in the Reserve Grade, the UH Rams J8s play the Poneke Ruffnuts (Division 1) and Tawa and Petone meet (Division 2).
Also on Saturday, the Premier 2 Murray Jensen Cup college final sees St Pat’s Silverstream host Paraparaumu College.
Sunday sees the Premiership Final between Scots College and St Pat’s Silverstream. Kick-off is currently listed at 1.00pm. This sees the return of Jerry Collins Stadium, after being out of action for most of the year to date.
All four WRFU Senior Men’s representative teams are in action on Saturday, with the Centurions away in Palmerston North, the Maori away in Taranaki and the Samoans and Fijians meeting each other in Wellington. The Wellington U19s cross Cook Strait to play Tasman U20.
The Wellington Pride are in a likely must-win situation on Saturday against the Bay of Plenty Volcanix in Tauranga as far as their FPC Premiership survival goes. They lost their fourth straight fixture yesterday to newly promoted Hawke’s Bay. Following BoP, they have their beye then they play Waikato.
The Wellington Lions play Otago in Dunedin on Saturday for the Mike Gibson Memorial Trophy and in round two of the NPC competition. Gibson was a former Wellington and Otago midfielder who died young of cancer in 1988 – we last spotlighted this match and the trophy three years ago, so look out for an updated article about the significance of this and of Wellington – Otago clashes on our website this week.
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All Blacks Rugby World Cup squad named today – it would never happen of course but imagine if they picked a complete bolter, someone that made his NPC debut in the weekend and they came out and said we like the look of his pass or similar!
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Scots College have never lost a final to St Pat’s Silverstream and are warm favourites for the decider having comprehensively accounted for the Catholics in the round-robin. Despite winning a coveted ‘Grand Slam’ (all six traditional fixtures) Silverstream appears to be regressing with unimaginative attack and a lack of discipline hampering their efforts for sustained periods.
Despite winning 43-0, Scots were pushed hard by Hutt International Boys’ School on Saturday. HIBS are a good watch. If they had one or two ‘big’ bodies to match some of the physicality in the top two teams, they would be a real threat. Will be good seeing some of these players in club rugby in the future.
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Jonah Ngan-Woo on the break for the Pride on Saturday, one of several Black Ferns XVs players in the competition. She scored a try and made some strong carries like this but couldn’t prevent another defeat in the Pride’s last match at home this year.
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What a performance by Krysten Cottrell in Hawke’s Bay’s 33-22 win over Wellington in the FPC. She made a try-saving tackle and then the match-winning break to go with four conversions. She has played 51 matches for the Tui and the five-time Black Fern, who’s a possum hunter during the week, appears to be getting better with age.
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A discussion point from last week was why are aren’t the Black Ferns 7s players involved in the Farah Palmer Cup? Some of these players are New Zealand’s best known women’s players and would help with the PR of the competition as well as raising its standard. Their last tournament was mid-May and their next tournament is in November as far as we can determine (which is not easy).
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The very eye-catching Auckland winger Angelica Vahai has run 407m in the FPC with the next-best player Fiaalii Solomona is next with 334. Aroha Savage has 48 carries, beaten defenders 25 and she has made 47 tackles three behind Natalie Delamere of Bay of Plenty.
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Taine Plumtree made his Welsh debut against England off the bench and performed strongly disrupting two lineouts and tackling with vigour.
Wales’ win over England was just their fifth in the last 18 tests. They held England try less for the first time since 2019 which ironically was also a World Cup warm-up fixture.
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Australia have lost 16 of their lost 21 tests and failed to win in New Zealand in 29 tests.
Sam Cane made 19 tackles in the Test, but did he really influence the breakdown? A Ruben Thorne-like figure perhaps. Sam Whitelock made 17 tackles and Ardie Savea played like Superman.
Is anyone in Australia with the first name Richie now a 501.
It was only the second time in 94 Tests the All Blacks didn’t field a Barrett.
Rob Valetini led the Rugby Championship tackle count with 53. Richie Mo’unga scored the most points with 28. Will Jordan made seven clean breaks and Pablo Matera made 44 carries.
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Big fan of daytime rugby. But a couple of things. Why was this one in Dunedin, in that why would you schedule a 2.30pm Saturday test in guaranteed perfect conditions in the country’s only stadium under a roof? They could play rugby in Dunedin at 3.00am, in rain, hail or climate change. Seems to us that you might otherwise play a daytime test outdoors such as up in Christchurch or Nelson and save the Dunedin ones for nighttime. Second, an opportunity missed perhaps to play this test on Sunday afternoon instead? In the modern era, we believe Saturday afternoons are for community sport, so how many thousands of people around the country missed seeing this match because of its timing because they were playing or involved in rugby or other sport at the same time? Both in New Zealand and Australia. Why deliberately knee-cap a big chunk of your potential audience like this? What do the All Blacks sponsors think of this?
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A strong debut in the coaching box by Kent Harris for Manawatu. The recent Hutt Old Boys Marist man is now assistant coach, and he even gave Sky TV his first halftime interview.
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A very scrappy win for Wellington to start the NPC. It took 68 minutes to score a try, but the defence was robust. Aidan Morgan kicked 17 points. With the injury to Asafo Aumua and Dane Coles in the All Blacks there appears to be a shortage of hookers. Things improved for debutant Josh Southall after a shaky start.
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Wellington’s record in all NPC matches against Manawatu is now played 29, won 21, lost eight and drawn none. Eleven of those wins are in Palmerston North, 10 are in Wellington.
Manawatu has now hosted Wellington 16 times: Wellington has won on 11 occasions to Manawatu’s five.
Wellington’s win was their fifth in succession against Manawatu, including the last four matches which have been played in Palmerston North.
Wellington retained the Coronation Cup, which was presented by the Arnott family to the Manawatu Rugby Union in the Queen’s coronation year of 1953. For many seasons the two unions played an annual Queen’s Birthday fixture for the Coronation Cup. This fixture goes back to 1887 when Wellington enjoyed what was then a reasonably comfortable 11-0 victory.
Prior to the start of the NPC/ITM Cup era in 1976, Wellington and Manawatu had met 67 times, of which Wellington won 45, Manawatu 15 and there were seven draws including three in a row 1948-50.
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A perhaps ominous opener from the ice-cold machine that is Canterbury in the NPC. At the same time as Wellington was battling to victory over Manawatu they were systematically picking apart Northland in Whangarei. Canterbury won 43-11 over last year’s strong performers.
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Former Norths back Alapati Leuia scored the first two tries of the match on debut on the left wing for North Harbour against Hawke’s Bay on Saturday. Leuia played for Waikato last year, so this is his third province. Former HOBM player Chase Tiatia scored one of two tries for the Magpies in this match as they won 23-21.
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Former Petone hooker Precious Auimatigi scored a hat-trick for the Tasman’s women’s team over Taranaki – on of three triple try scorers for Tasman in their 61-10 win over minnows Taranaki.
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Black Ferns captain Ruahei Demant kicked eight of nine conversions (and scored a try) in Auckland’s 61-19 FPC win over Bay of Plenty.
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Participants of the Ken Laban drinking game on Saturday would have been in for an early night. There were 10 references to what school a player attended in the first 20 minutes of the Manawatu-Wellington game. As per the rules, that’s 10 full vessel consumptions.
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This was really funny (in a good way) pre-match on Saturday:
The cutest thing you will EVER see on a rugby field! 🥰
🎥: @SkySportNZ pic.twitter.com/zx3EK0e9E1
— Bunnings NPC (@BunningsNPC) August 5, 2023
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It didn’t result in a win, but a competitive comeback by the Southland Stags yesterday. They were 19-3 down against Waikato after as many minutes and were lucky not to concede a fourth try but for a spilt ball in the corner. They came back to lose by ‘just’ 21-29. One of their try-scorers was former Petone outside back Villami Fine.
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Likewise, Auckland came back from 14-27 down to pip Bay of Plenty 32-30 with a last-gasp converted try.
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Wairarapa-Bush RFU last won the Hurricanes Under 20 title in 2019, for only the second time in 17 years. On Sunday, at the Bulls Rugby Football Club, they secured their third title in 20 years of competition, following an emphatic 53 points to 0 victory over the winless Poverty Bay RFU team.
Read more on the HYRC site HERE
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Feilding High School beat Whanganui Collegiate 43-12 in their Central North Island competition semi-final on Saturday. Feilding and St John’s Hamilton will meet in this weekend’s decider.
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Hamilton Boys’ High School beat Napier Boys’ High School 56-22 in the final of the Super 8 competition on Saturday. Based on that form, it would be hard to see Hamilton not representing the Chiefs region at the Top 4 from 1-3 September. As top Hurricanes Super 8 school and assuming they first win the Chiefs final, Napier will play the second placed Wellington side from this coming Sunday’s Wellington final in the following weeks Hurricanes semi-finals. The second placed Super 8 school (Palmerston North BHS – but not confirmed) will play the Wellington winner in the other semi-final,
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Vale Tane Norton – former All Blacks captain and hooker. He led the All Blacks to their 1977 series victory over the British and Irish Lions amongst other vast achievements.
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The Heartland Championship starts this coming weekend. Of the three lower North Island teams relevant to most readers of this website, Horowhenua-Kapiti are away to South Canterbury, Wairarapa-Bush are home hosting Ngāti Porou East Coast and Whanganui are also home against Thames Valley.
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On Friday Roy Roper turns 100. If he makes it he will be the first All Black to turn 100.
Club Rugby readers and supporters poll
As another club rugby season draws to a close (which is the name of our website) we need to consider the future direction of Club Rugby and this website. We started in 2005, so hoping to keep going for a while yet with the next goal of reaching the 20-year milestone in two years!
Please look out for a poll coming up soon in this space where we will ask the reader what direction we should take heading into 2024 and beyond. Our general philosophy is “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” – but everything needs a refresh at least. If you have any ideas in advance of this on where we could be going with this please get in touch at editor@clubrugby.co.nz
