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On a miserable, rainy Saturday afternoon, the Mahurangi RFC premiers ran out to face Massey RFC on a sodden field at the Warkworth Showground for their last game of the regular season on June 28.
Despite fighting hard to stay in the contest, including some stout defence on their own try line for sustained periods, they ultimately went down to the visitors 22–13, who had a slight edge at scrum time, especially later in the match.
Massey also had better ball control overall and showed more discipline in the slippery conditions.
Costly turnovers and penalties halted any momentum Mahu had while on attack and repeatedly invited the red, yellow and blues into their half, where they camped for large parts of the contest.
Still, the premiers were only six points adrift going into the final 10 minutes or so, and it wasn’t until Massey landed a penalty kick stretching their lead to nine that the game was truly over.
Prems captain Sireli Kaloucava, who was filling in for the injured Ben Dallow, said they hung in there and kept on fighting.
“It was just a few errors that cost us today. Their scrum was quite physical, but our scrum was really physical as well. It was good preparation for the quarters next week – we’re looking forward to it,” he said.
Mahu coach Amasio Valence said the team needed to look at themselves first and do the small things right.
“We’ve just got to concentrate on our game plan as a team. That’s the most important thing and what let us down,” he said
Valence, however, hailed the commitment of his team on defence, particularly on their own goal line.
“We’ve been working really hard on defence training for maybe a month and a half now, so credit to them. That comes from playing with heart too.”
The silver lining was that despite the result, the prems still went through to the quarter finals and played North Shore RFC at Vauxhall Park on Saturday, July 5 (see online for the result).
