One of those flashes of brilliance was Whaka's first try. From a Whaka scrum at halfway the ball was spun wide to right wing Maurice Stone who kicked over the defence, sprinted through, re-gathered and scored in the corner with first-five Tyson Ripia converting to extend the lead 7-0.
But the warning signs were there early at scrum time for Whaka, Tauranga often getting the shunt on and putting early pressure on their opponents.
The visitors were next to score from a penalty after a Whaka player was pinged for tackling with no arms. Tauranga first-five Nic Evemy made easy work of the 30m kick in front of the posts.
The visitors gained some ascendancy in the forwards and were rewarded with two well worked tries to right winger Ken Tupuola and openside flanker Matty Bru. Evemy could only convert one of the two tries to take his side to a 15-7 lead.
It appeared at times Whaka had no answer to the rampaging forwards of Tauranga, who simple charged forward, would get knocked over only for the next forward to take up the charge.
However like Whaka, handling errors would get in the road and a couple of opportunities with the line beckoning would be put down.
Whaka were equally guilty of missing prime opportunities to score again in the first half.
A prime example was a Whaka scrum inside their own 22, big No 8 Tony Tautarangi, broke off a scrum going backwards, bust through a weak tackle and threaded a brilliant pass through two Tauranga players only for Courtney Mita to drop the ball with 60m of open field to play with.
Nether coach would have been happy at the break. Despite a comfortable 15-7 lead to the visitors, neither side really looked like they wanted to take control of the match.
Although after the break the bounce of the ball appeared to be falling in favour of the Tauranga when they scored early into the second spell with left wing Philip Togotogorua touching down and Evemy converting to extend the lead to 22-7.
It almost appeared after the try, Tauranga ran out of gas in their backline play although their forwards seemed to have it over the Whaka pack at set play. But the smaller and more mobile Whaka pack appeared to pick up the pace and started to run their bigger opponents around. This started to open gaps for Whaka's danger men - such as captain Douglas Edwards, Akira Mako and Stone - to make in-roads.
However, time and again when something looked promising, it broke down.
Whaka's first points after the break came around the 60 minute mark from a penalty kick from Ripia but for the next 10 minutes Whaka were under the pump from the Tauranga forwards who kept the ball in close and continued to rumble it up.
It was only try-saving tackles from Ripia, Trent Sweeney and Chervez Rika which stopped Tauranga from scoring.
Then the game changed. Whaka turned down a chance at a kickable penalty and went for a lineout 10m from Tauranga's line. But the audible disgust from the crowd when Whaka failed to get the ball back from the lineout seemed to indicate, with only five minutes left and a 22-10 deficit, the game was out of reach.
But Edwards said Whaka still had belief in each other.
"We wanted the win right from the start but I just said to the boys 'the main thing today is to come off that field heads up high and look each other in the eye and make sure we've given it 100 per cent and put our bodies on the line for the team,' and that's all I asked for."
Whaka did something you wouldn't expect from a premier side. They started to play tip and run rugby. They kept the game away from set plays, ran and passed it at every opportunity.
It appeared to work because all of a sudden the visitors could keep up with the pace and before the whistle could blow for full-time Whaka had scored two tries to Mako and Stone. Ripia able to convert only one of the two tries, to level the score at 22-all.
Tauranga Sports captain Adam Robinson said he was disappointed his side let a win slip away but gave credit to Whaka's performance.
"Coming down to Whaka, is always a tough game and to come away with a draw generally we would be pretty happy about. But disappointing that we did let them in ... We were on top of them and they came right back at us and that's something we need to learn [from]."
