McKenty makes amends after early sin-bin infraction

Whatever Joel McKenty did during Thursday night's 15-all draw against Southland drew attention from the Invercargill crowd after a clumsy start quickly made him Northland enemy number-one.
McKenty admitted his match "didn't start too well" but denied any bad blood between him and former Taniwha Tony Koonwaiyou,  after being yellow-carded for a clumsy swipe at him in the sixth minute.
 "I just got ahead of the ball and tried to judge the kick by how he jumped for it, but he jumped early and I jumped early and it turned out that neither of us were anywhere near the ball," he said.
"I didn't think it was too bad at the time ... but I saw a replay of the game on Saturday morning and realised that it looked pretty nasty," he said. It had looked as though McKenty's indiscretion might not cost Northland any points but just as he was  to return, Josh Bekhuis had crossed the line to put the Stags ahead.
"You sort of feel like you owe the team when you have a 10-minute rest on the sideline," he said.
The former Kamo High School student then played one of his best games of the season and was behind many a tackle and turnover as the Taniwha continued to frustrate the Stags' attack.
With two tries to Jared Payne and two kicks to Lachie Munro, the Taniwha were ahead 15-10 until Jason Rutledge scored handy to the posts in the final minute.

 McKenty was philosophical about the loss.
"It was probably a fair result, but we still feel a little bit robbed letting them in right on fulltime."
They would have felt worse if the conversion had gone over but Southland missed all five of their kicks in the match.
Third-choice kicker Kendrick Lynn missed his first three shots at goal and was replaced by Seminar Manu. Manu missed his first shot and then as he completed lining up the final conversion, he was greeted by a charge down, led by McKenty.
"He moved, and I'll take that to my grave with me. No one can convince me he didn't. If you watch the replay there were three or four of us who went as soon as he moved and I didn't even see the referee put his hand out to send us back because I was watching the ball," he said.
 The nervous Manu had pulled the simple kick wide, when the Northland players had all returned behind the goal line.
McKenty stayed on the field when replacements were made, moving to blindside when Tim Dow replaced Roy Griffin. Versatile hooker Mikaele Tuu'u  moved to openside.
"It's a good move for us because it gives us extra loose forward cover and we have been struggling a little in the contact area for a few reasons ... and one of them was in the clean-out area but I felt we did improve on that down in Southland, and that was pleasing because we have been putting in a bit of work into it," McKenty said.
 Griffin played well at blindside after having a limited build-up for the match and that could see the coaching staff starting McKenty at openside - his preferred position - more often.
The team's commitment and defence improved from the side's previous outing against Otago and now the challenge is to play in the same manner against Counties,  in Whangarei  on Thursday.
 "Our kick-chase will be important and our line speed on defence will be two key areas that we'll be practising this week," he said.