KEY POINTS:
Taranaki seized the final quarterfinal spot of the Air New Zealand Cup rugby championship with 45-21 over Counties-Manukau in Auckland today.
The result of the final match of the preliminary round booked them a meeting with top seeds Auckland in the knockout round on Saturday in Auckland.
The other quarterfinal matchups feature Canterbury at home to Otago also on Saturday, Wellington hosting Southland on Friday and Hawke's Bay playing reigning champions, Waikato, in Napier on Sunday.
Taranaki started the match on in ninth place on 18 points and needing a bonus-point win to unseat North Harbour who were on 22 points, for the eighth and final spot.
A mere win was insufficient because that would have resulted in a tie on points with North Harbour retaining the eighth spot by virtue of having beaten Taranaki 19-13 earlier.
Although far from a complete team performance, Taranaki still had more than enough firepower to overcome a feisty Counties Manukau side in which wing Lelia Masaga had an outstanding game.
Masaga was a thorn in Taranaki's side in the first half as they strove to put away a team that learned on Friday their coach, Kevin Putt, had resigned.
Taranaki's mission got off to a good start when wing Shayne Austin got the scoreboard ticking with an early try.
But Taranaki were rocked when Masaga burst through to score after receiving the ball on a wraparound by first five-eighth Dean Cummins who then converted the try.
Taranaki, found gaps in the Counties defence to score two more first half tries through lively flanker Scott Waldrom and another to Austin but Counties bit back through flanker James Maher who finished off a line-out drive to burrow over for Cummins to add the extras.
Taranaki breathed a sigh of relief when they reached their target after 48 minutes when skipper Tony Penn got their fourth try, crashing over near the uprights after eight phases of possession.
The game opened up considerably after that with Taranaki scoring another three tries through Nathan Hohaia, Waldrom and Asalemo Malo while Male Sa'u replied for Counties.
" We knew we needed four tries and having managed to do that, the boys are really stoked," Penn said.
Looking ahead to playing Auckland, Penn said it would take a huge effort to beat them.
" They played very well last night (to beat Canterbury) and their defence was really awesome.
"It's going to be a really tough challenge but it's one that we are looking forward to.
"Obviously there are a few things we have to work on but we can take out a lot of positives from today.
" We'll fine tune a few things this week and give it a good nudge."
NZPA
