Canterbury too fast, too good

A rampant Canterbury, flushed with a wealth of possession from all aspects of forward play, ran in 16 tries as they walloped Wairarapa-Bush by a whopping 96-10 in the Ranfurly Shield rugby match played at Jade Stadium, Christchurch yesterday.
It was the biggest thumping suffered by a team representing Wairarapa, Bush or Wairarapa-Bush in 44 Shield games and, what's more, it could have been worse with the Canterbury kickers having an off day, managing just the eight conversions.
Put simply Canterbury were simply too big and too fast.
The forwards had a massive weight advantage over their Wairarapa-Bush counterparts and utilised it well, doing an absolute demolition job on their opposition in the scrums and being virtually unstoppable whenever they looked to attack through the rolling maul.
In the scrums, in particular, it was a nightmare for the Wairarapa-Bush pack who were invariably going backwards at a great rate of knots no matter who had the put in Indeed there were probably only a couple of scrums in the whole game where the platform from Wairarapa-Bush could be labelled as anywhere near stable, and those came in the closing stages when Canterbury's concentration seemed to lapse?.that or perhaps they were feeling a tinge of sympathy for their battered opponents by then.
It was a similar story with the rolling mauls.For yonks Canterbury teams have made a habit of using this avenue of the game to embarrass their rivals the world over and despite Wairarapa-Bush doing their utmost to slow their momentum there they just didn't have the size or the technique to do so. Not helping the Wairarapa-Bush cause up front was the fact that not only were the Canterbury's forwards bulky but mobile as well. Inevitably they arrived at the breakdowns in huge numbers and it was nothing unusual to see the front rowers and locks ranging wide in support of their backs in attacking situations.
With a sheer mountain of possession at their disposal the Canterbury backs had huge opportunity to cut loose and while they were guilty of basic passing and handling errors at times they all too often were able to scythe through the first line of defence almost at will. And when gaps were created they were quick enough to turn them into points on the board with monotonous regularity.
Strangely though it would be unfair to condemn Wairarapa-Bush too harshly for their defensive blunders.
Having a wave of red and black jerseys constantly coming at them virtually guaranteed that tackles would be missed.
Against other mainly amateur sides there would have been time to recover composure, but against the professionalism of Canterbury you end up spending a heck of a lot of time behind your own goalposts.
As it was loose forwards Sylvanus Iro, Sam Henderson and Mike Spence all pulled off many telling tackles through the course of the game as did lock Tomasi Kedarabuka who clearly emerged as his team's player of the match. Not only was his workrate on defence impressive but he was also one of the few Wairarapa-Bush forwards who showed real grunt with ball in hand. Two or three times in the second half he made crashing runs which gained his side valuable metreage. Little was seen of the Wairarapa-Bush backs in an attacking sense, simply because they didn't receive the type of ball which could be run back at the opposition with any chance of success.
Halfback Hamish McKenzie could, however, savour the moment when he made a sniping run from the base of a maul and set up a try for flanker Henderson and considering any ball he got at scrum time was messy-very messy- his service to his outsides wasn't too bad either.
Second-five Nathan Couch was typically aggressive in everything he did without ever having the room to demonstrate his running skills and while wing Junior Tongia, in his debut game for Wairarapa-Bush, also lacked opportunity in that way he did star in a couple of sideline bursts and will obviously be good value for his side when the NPC first division programme gets under way.
It is a mark of the huge gulf between the top echelon of provincial sides in this country and those like Wairarapa-Bush in the second tier that for the latter to make their mark in that first division series they probably won't have to perform much better than they did yesterday. A comforting thought isn't it?