Rugby: Ruthless Awanui romp to fourth straight title

As the fan's sign says, Awanui claimed their fourth consecutive Bell Shield after dispatching Te Rarawa 46-5 in the Mangonui senior club rugby's grand final at Arnold Rae Park on Saturday.

Awanui won their fourth Mangonui senior club rugby title on the trot in emphatic style, proving far too slick for Te Rarawa in the Bell Shield final at Arnold Rae Park on Saturday.

This sadly meant it wasn't a particularly memorable climax to the season from a neutral perspective nor, particularly, from a Te Rarawa one.

With a balmy westerly at their backs, the champions were three tries up within the opening 15 minutes, at which point the result appeared a foregone conclusion to everyone at the park.

As has been happening all season, any missed tackle on an Awanui player generally ended in points. Rarawa got their first and only points of the match with a try late in the first half, pushing over from some strong build-up and forward play.

While all the talk during the year had focused on Awanui's highly vaunted backs, manager Glen Subritzky singled out the front eight as the driving force behind the lethal form witnessed on Saturday. He complimented a very good Te Rarawa side but noted they had simply come across an Awanui outfit deliveringtheir most clinical performance of the season.

For Rarawa it was a case of right place, wrong time.

"The game was won up front where our forwards got on top of the Rarawa pack and turned defence into attack. At the lineouts and scrums we were able to keep the pressure on. Once the ball was moved wide, gaps opened up for our backs."

Meanwhile, the champions mounted a successful defence of the Bay of Islands Rugby Union championship title at Simson Park on Saturday afternoon.

Conditions were overcast but dry throughout, and the pitch was described as hard and fast. And much like what was happening at the same time further north in the Mangonui final, Kerikeri simply brushed the opposition aside and had virtually claimed the title before halftime.

A jubilant BP Kerikeri Premier side after they claimed back-to-back titles in Bay of Islands senior club rugby with a 41-22 win over Moerewa in the season finale at Simson Park.

Kerikeri manager Ed Lyman noted the visitors executed their gameplan to near-perfection.

A turning point came when Tom Smith kicked a penalty from 50m out to put the champions ahead by 10 points relatively early on.

"If they had scored first, it could have been a completely different game," he said of Moerewa.

"Our team training for the last three weeks, everything we have been doing all year, has finally started working for us."

Kerikeri tries were scored by Sione Onesi, Peter Drummond, Jevon Halvorson, Aaron Barlow, Sam Nock and Jesse Rihari, with Tom Smith kicking four conversions and a penalty.

In winning this year's title, Kerikeri rewrote the club history books, being the ninth time the side had won the Bay title (others being in 1967, 1970, 1974, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2012 and 2015) but the first time it had been secured in back-to-back fashion.

Moerewa coach Paul Owen noted that all the hosting club's points - four tries and a conversion - scored in the second half, had all been too little too late and by quite a long shot, too.

"[We are] bloody disappointed in our performance," Owen said. "Kerikeri played well, just blew us away in the first 20. Before we knew it, we were three tries down. Our boys just couldn't get back into it."