Taranaki left to cry over spilt milk

Northland's David Gibson gets the forearm against Taranaki in New Plymouth last night. Ross Land / Getty Images

Northland 23 Taranaki 17

These are difficult days for rural rugby folk.

Having just perfected the milking routines to fit in with 7.30pm kick-offs, they are forced to buy season tickets to their local stadia with no idea who their team are going to play at the business end of the competition. When they finally discover who their provincial rugby rivals will be, they are then handed a 6pm kick-off.

Which is probably why hordes of dairy farmers never showed up to watch Taranaki play Northland in the first of the latest rugby invention, the rugby repechage play-off, last night.

Considering the result the farmers who opted not to rush through the cowshed and hurtle to the game were the wiser.

Not that Northland skipper David Holwell had much sympathy for the Taranaki folk.

"It was always going to be tough and this game was tough from start to finish. In the end I think kicks cost them the game, if they had got their kicks they probably would have won," he said. He was right, Taranaki threw away 13 points with their poor kicking.

Northland are suddenly quarter-finals material, although it took a mammoth effort while down to 14 men for the last 10 minutes. Northland had the first say as well, lock Daniel Goodwin scoring a converted try.

It was rugby, of a sorts, but of a design not seen in many coaching manuals. Northland tried hard to conjure up try scoring chances for Taranaki, then the hosts repaid the favour.

Taranaki manufactured their first try after Northland punted centre Mathew Harvey the ball on his own 10-metre line. Halfback Brett Goodin continued the counter-attack and Miah Nikora eventually strolled in for the try.

Northland skipper David Holwell had already slotted a penalty and got another 20 minutes after Nikora's try to go to the break leading 13-7.

Northland created overlaps with some intelligent backline counter attacking runs, then decided it best not to test the Taranaki defence by not passing it to the final man. Taranaki repaid the favour, the most glaring on the halftime hooter when Michael Tagicakibau had the tryline a step away but was never passed the pill.

Eventually Northland conjured up the most consistent attacking period, a 12-ruck sequence inside the Taranaki half that ended with prop Tony Coughlan worming his way over from close in.

Northland's commanding lead was the signal for both teams to start producing form close to the traditional version of the game, albeit littered with questionable passes and equally puzzling tactics.

It wasn't until Northland had lost Matt Faleuka to the sin bin in the last 10 minutes that Taranaki used their notorious driving mauls to try and breach the Northland defence.

But it was simply not Taranaki's night.