Missing men disappoint, but Northland surprisesA severely depleted Northland rugby league team proved the pundits wrong with a comfortable 42-22 defeat of Bay of Plenty Coastline on Saturday
The win came as something of a relief to new Northland coach Jay Hepi, who said that the team hadn't allowed selected player
defections to dampen their spirits.
Hepi said the performance of the players who fronted for the match, plus a few late ring-ins, more than made up for the disappointment of the no-shows.
"The show must go on and guys like Tawio Davis, who was picked as a back rower or centre, fronted up as a prop and ran straight and hard all day and Tux (Te Ariki) Walker were outstanding for us out there," Hepi said.
"Players from entire clubs failed to show up, some of them without even letting me know so in the end it was just players from Kaikohe, Morewa, Marist and Hikurangi who beat Coastline," Hepi said.
While the game was played at Takahiwai, none of the championship winning club were available for the game although a few watched from the sideline.
The match started badly for Northland with second rower Ray Thompson carted away by the ambulance staff in the second minute. Thompson suffered suspected broken ribs after a tackle and Northland were down to a three-man bench.
Despite the early set-back, Northland opened the scoring with tries to Joe Rau, Bobby Rameka and Tane Ravlick to lead 16-6 in the 30th minute before allowing Coastline to score again with some basic errors creeping into their game.
Northland's Tevita Jurgenson celebrated his return to rugby league with the first of two tries for the day to make it 20-12 at the break.
Another Rau try was converted by Woody Maihi, before Maihi himself scored an excellent solo try to take the score to 32-12 midway through the spell.
Northland tired in the final quarter and conceded points to Coastline with Nepia Hepi and Jurgensen scoring Northland's final tries.
Hepi was thrilled with the way his under prepared side pulled together and is hoping for an even better performance against an Auckland Maori side in Kaikohe this weekend.
