Hikurangi dig deep to beat Sharks

Hikurangi may have had more than a few players out of position on Saturday, but they still had enough class to pull off a last gasp 12-7 win against the competition leaders, the Western Sharks, in front of a big home crowd. 
Northland hooker and Hikurangi skipper Tim Dow began the game at second five-eighth but moved into first five-eighth for the final assault with time already up on the clock. After a series of pick and goes were halted by the resolute Sharks defence short of their goal-line, Rhyan Caine tried the "backs" and Dow dived under a tackle to score the winning try.
Dow was jubilant the home side had managed to finally capitalise on a wealth of possession and territory during the match to claim the win, after trailing the Sharks for most of the game.
"The Sharks may have won the round, but at least we beat them here today," he said.
 
It wasn't a pretty win, but Hikurangi were able to use the ball more effectively during the match, with the Sharks often forced to kick the ball away to get out of their own quarter.
"We had truckloads of possession and field position, but we were a little bit disorganised on attack and we got stuck into one pattern of play, so I think we need to practise another couple of patterns in time for the second round," he said.
Both sides defended well with clear breaks few and far between. Both packs seemed to cancel each other out and while Hikurangi looked likely probing wide, they lacked backs running straight lines to capitalise.
 The Sharks' pacy outside backs saw precious little ball, with the Hikurangi defence up on them quickly, and made little headway except when they tried chip kicks behind the defence - something that was normally well covered
by the home side.
"All we did today was defend," Sharks captain Garry Whippy said
"Our scrum was all right, but our lineout was appalling and that made it hard because we didn't have any ball out there."
Whippy thought the game might have ended a few minutes earlier, with referee Marius Botha playing around eight minutes of added time in the second half.
"We were a bit unlucky at the end, we thought we'd done enough but although we'll dispute it, that's just how it happens sometimes, we were trying to spoil their sponsors night but couldn't, so I'll have to do my best after the game," he laughed.
To be fair to the referee, there were several stoppages in the second spell, with players from both sides putting their bodies on the line.
The match started  well for the visitors, with speedy winger Mateo Malupo touching down in the opening five minutes after good lead-up work by Solomon Palu and his brother Lani. Lani toed the ball through and once Malupo picked up the bouncing ball on the left wing it was all over.
Reece Hammon added the conversion to lead 7-0 but there was no further score in the spell until Hikurangi winger Dallas Pearce made the most of a difficult chance to score in the corner on the stroke of halftime.
Both sides had chances to add to the 7-5 score but once again the defence won out. Tim Dow surprised everyone by taking a penalty 43m out from the uprights that just slipped under the crossbar, and then did it again by handing a similar attempt to Joel McKenty, who's kick finished nearly hitting the corner flag.
Sharks centre Lani Palu was sinbinned for a late challenge with time almost up on the clock and Hikurangi needed no further invitation and attacked until Dow came up with the winner.
Loose forward Eric Wihongi was outstanding, as was fellow loosie Brad Christensen at No8, after returning from injury recently, while loose forward cum centre, cum second five-eighth Eric Abraham  was literally everywhere.