Touch judge flags away win in Heartland opener

Wairarapa-Bush rugby coach Kelvin Tantrum wasn't trotting out the old "we wuz robbed" line after his team's narrow 13-10 loss to West Coast in their opening Heartland rugby championship match at Greymouth on Saturday, but he could have been excused for doing so.
West Coast , beaten semi-finalists in the Meads Cup last season, came from 10-0 down at halftime to grab victory with their sole try by Josh Cornish coming after a touch judge had firstly raised his flag to signal foot in touch and then dropping it about the time the try was scored, much to the chagrin of the Wairarapa-Bush players in close proximity.
It was a situation which led to Tantrum having a "good discussion" with both the match referee and NZRFU referees high performance manager Lyndon Bray at the game's end with the consensus being the touch judge had been incompetent.
"You usually expect play to stop when a flag is raised and you have to wonder how that affected the defensive effort at that time," Tantrum said.
"Maybe there would have been more desperation had players not seen the flag up ... that's something we will never know."
Tantrum was, however, not wanting to dwell on that setback when reflecting on the overall Wairarapa-Bush performance.
"It was disappointing but in reality we created enough scoring chances to win the game anyway," he said. "There were probably two or three tries which went begging because our finishing wasn't good enough and we've got no one to blame but ourselves for that."
Wairarapa-Bush scored all their points in the first half which mostly went their way. Fullback Nick Olson was put into a gap by first-five Byron Karaitiana for the first try after 17 minutes with Karaitiana adding the conversion. He later landed a penalty to give them a 10-0 advantage at the break.
West Coast had been bumbling and ineffective in most of their attacking play through the first half but they looked much more organised in the second.
First-five Jason Merrett opened their account with a penalty and then came the controversial try from Cornush who slipped through several tackles in a sideline dash. Merrett's conversion from wide out levelled the scores and he then kicked a second penalty to give the home team the win.
The loss of in-form loose forwards Jared Hawkins and Duncan Law early in the piece with injury was a big blow to Wairarapa-Bush, especially with the other first string loosie Joss Tua-Davidson not even being part of the starting line-up because of the well-documented hassles over his residential qualifications.
Hawkins damaged a knee badly enough to suggest he could be out for the season while Law strained a hamstring and will probably miss at least a couple of games.
What this meant was Chris Senior and Joe Feast coming off the bench to play on the flanks and Corey Reid moving to No 8 and they all had solid games, especially Senior who was quick and constructive at the breakdowns and a doughty defender.
Coach Tantrum was pleased with the stability of a scrum in which "origin player" hooker Ben Pereira was a major contributor. He also made his mark with some rampaging bursts in broken play. The lineout too was impressive with Tomasi Kedrabuka leading the way there.
The Wairarapa-Bush backs had a mixed day with some of the passing and option taking being indifferent to say the least. The pick of them was clearly fullback Nick Olson who was always a danger on the counter attack.
Wairarapa-Bush play defending Meads Cup champions Wanganui at Memorial Park this coming Saturday.