League: Hastings lads too strong for visitors

Manaia Lambert (Hastings Intermediate) tries to barge through the tackle of JD Taputora (Napier). Photo / Warren Buckland

It was a classic David v Goliath sporting encounter yesterday as a team of rugby league novices from Napier Intermediate School took on the far more league-savvy boys from Hastings Intermediate.

Neither Napier coach and school teacher Sam Prescott nor any of his team could claim any great degree of rugby league experience. But for Hastings it was there in spades.

The school has become a regular in the rugby league at the AIMS Games (intermediate schools) in Tauranga and won the final there last year. In the absence of anything else, that makes them national intermediate schools champs.

Yesterday, Hastings had the home advantage, with more than 300 youngsters barracking for them from the sidelines, where former Kiwis prop Kevin Tamati, from Bridge Pa, was helping manage the team, and it was his trophy, the Kevin Tamati Taonga, at stake.

Completing the picture was the man in the middle, Hastings deputy principal Shane Foster, a former top provincial rugby league representative and now a rugby league referee, as he was for yesterday's game.

The result in the circumstances was inevitable, Foster recording Hastings Intermediate had won 48-4, in a match of four nine-minute quarters.

But it wasn't so much about the score on the day, said Tamati, speaking with both teams before and post match.

Most seemed oblivious to the fame of the man before them, whose seven seasons and 22 tests for New Zealand are most recalled for his sideline scrap with Australian Greg Dowling in Brisbane.

It was he said, about reviving this "tonu", the taonga having been contested just once before, when Hastings Boys High School beat Flaxmere College in 2012.

While keen to see it develop a Napier v Hastings or Ahuriri v Heretaunga culture, he has part of the answer. Yesterday's was the first match in a "tri-series," and Napier will host Match 2.

Prescott, a New Zealander who played lots of rugby union in 20 years in Australia, says his team have the skills, evidenced with five players in the Napier primary schools representative squad.

"But," he said, "we are a bit short of players and resources."

Tamati, hoping the need for players, resources, and coaching would be answered, told the Napier team: "I'm hoping they [Hastings] won't find it as easy as they did today."