North Harbour 23
Wellington 52
North Harbour's leaky defence provided Wellington with a feast of second-half ball as they ran out 52-23 winners in a national provincial championship rugby match at Albany today.
Harbour had worked hard to hold Wellington to 20-20 at halftime, but the visitors ran in five second-half tries through some woeful defence to secure the bonus-point win.
Wellington had dominated possession and territory for much of the first half, but showed little in the way of reward on the scoreboard.
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Although a Piri Weepu penalty opened the scoring for the visitors, North Harbour crossed first as Wellington tried to run the ball out from inside the 22.
Lock Api Naikatini's floating pass was snapped up by Harbour first five-eighth Ben Botica, who strolled over for the try.
Mike Harris extended the lead 10-3 with a penalty before prop John Schwalger got one back for Wellington, burrowing over from close range.
Harbour responded after a storming run from Matt Luamanu just on the half-hour mark saw the big No 8 touch down, the conversion putting Harbour in front 17-10.
Another Weepu penalty, followed in quick time by a converted try to halfback Alby Matthewson gave Wellington a 20-17 lead which was nullifed by another Harris penalty right on the halftime siren.
The deadlock was broken seven minutes in the second spell, after Harris and Weepu had exchanged penalties.
Wellington winger Alipate Leiua showed a good eye and better hands as he latched on to a Charlie Ngatai fly kick, breaking through down the left-hand touchline.
Wellington recycled the ball at pace, and a well-timed Matthewson pass found straight-running flanker Scott Fuglistaller with plenty of pace to pierce the shaky North Harbour defence.
From then on, it was all Wellington. Hooker Dane Coles cleaned up untidy Harbour ball from the lineout, offloading for captain Jeremy Thrush to cross with 20 minutes remaining.
Five minutes later Leuia unleashed a 60m sprint to score after some good work from Shaun Treeby in tidying up loose ball. Wing Julian Savea compounded the Harbour misery five minutes later when he ghosted through for Wellington's sixth, then Leuia completed the rout with his second try with four minutes remaining.
- NZPA
