A cold but bright and sunny morning saw 20 – yes 20(a record)! – team members assemble at HHS for the journey down to Taumarunui at 8am. Definitely heard some zzzz’s in my car as the boys took advantage of a couple of hours extra sleep. We arrived, just had time to stretch and were straight out on to the field after a very quick warm up. Taumarunui struck quickly and before we could blink they were 3 tries up. I think we were still asleep! Matt took advantage of an early penalty to put 3 points on the board. The initial shock over, we started to put some passes together, worked hard in the scrums and contested line-outs well. Taumarunui had a few strong players who, when they got the ball, ran hard and sidestepped round tackles to get well-earned tries. More of the team need to nail those tackles and step up more quickly if we are to stem the flow of tries against us. In the 2nd half we woke up a bit and had a few chances to score. However, Taumarunui defended well and despite them losing two players to the sin bin we couldn’t capitalise. We also defended well with notable performances from Matt who battled away and was in the middle of everything and Johnny who tackled like a demon. Rikky and Lachlan both put in a fair few tackles and generally put pressure on running players, and Joel, taking advantage of a bye in the In-line hockey to turn out for us, had a good run out. It was a good match in beautiful surroundings and stunning weather; a steep learning curve for the team but hopefully they will respond and be inspired to keep on improving. A great turn out boys – well done for being there and working hard. Awesome effort! See you at training!

Anne Robertson