Touch: Tai Tokerau make giant strides

Northland's under-15 mixed touch team has started the journey of correcting Tai Tokerau's name as easy beats in touch circles by coming second at the Touch Nationals.

Tai Tokerau fielded two teams at the nationals, an under-15 mixed and under-17 boys, with the younger side proving the stronger of the two.

While the under-17 team did not do the easy beat tag any favours, by not winning any games, tour manager Rangipai Turner said just having two teams represent the region was enough to show Northland touch will get stronger.

"All in all it was a good outcome for both teams," Turner said of the results in March. "We haven't been exposed to this level of touch [nationals] for a long time, if ever, at a junior grade.

"[However], we used to go to nationals at senior level years ago [and] we used to be the easy beats."

Boosting the appearance of the teams was the sideline talk of how good the under-15 side's play was.

"We came second out of 14 teams," coach Joe Rau said. "People were amazed at the type of touch we were playing."

The under-15s went through unbeaten in their pool play, winning six games on the trot - against Horowhenua Kapiti, North Harbour, Thames Valley, Otago, Auckland and Canterbury - to qualify top of their pool.

And, if that wasn't enough, they then went on to beat the top team in the other pool, Hawke's Bay, to advance to the grand final.

"We met our arch-rivals North Harbour in the grand final," Rau said, "who beat Hawke's Bay in a crossover semifinal."

However, for Tai Tokerau there wasn't to be a fairy tale ending as North Harbour turned a loss to Northland on day one to win the grand final 5-4, after Tai Tokerau had been up 4-2 at halftime.

"A couple of basic handling errors and defensive lapses cost us in the latter part of the second half, and it happened so fast we could not recover once Harbour were leading with only minutes remaining," Rau said.

"I'm very proud of my team, they were unknown to a lot of other teams but we really went down to win it."

The under-15 side's success comes after Tai Tokerau's under-11 mixed team came third at the Junior IPS Competition earlier this year.

As an added carrot for his players, Rau told them New Zealand selection was a possibility if they wanted to, but, they had to win and win well.

As a result, captain Lee Turner made the New Zealand under-15s boys team to tour Australia in September.

"Lee deserves his accolades. He trains hard, is humble and is an exceptional player who will go a long way in touch and other sports," Rau said.

Turner, who attended the Elite Touch Academy in 2012, was also selected in the New Zealand Maori under-16 boys team to tour Australia later this year along with his younger brother, Paul Turner, and Caleb Aeikins.

Rau encouraged people to get involved with touch and better themselves as players in whatever sport they do.

"Touch will give you tools to make you a better rugby player, a better league player, [and] a better netball player, pretty much a better player in a lot of sports," he said.

Tai Tokerau Touch will look to grow by doubling the number of teams going away to the IPS and National tournaments next year.