Umaga and Lomu lead charge

Wellington 47 Counties Manukau 0

Wellington kept alive their prospects of defending the first division title when beating an out-of-sorts Counties-Manukau at the Cake Tin.

After the despair of Wellington's 13-10 loss to Southland the previous Saturday, this was a much more convincing effort.

It was no coincidence that Wellington had centre Tana Umaga and wing Jonah Lomu back from All Black duty.

They had a big influence on the result, particularly Umaga, who revelled in the captaincy.

It was his first time in the role after being promoted because of injury to incumbent Norm Hewitt.

Umaga instilled a greater sense of urgency in the Wellington team and his attack and defence contributed a lot to the home team's second win of the season.

Lomu secured two tries, one in each half. The second came from a typical surge by the blockbusting winger along the left-hand touch for the corner.

Wellington's other tryscorers were Christian Cullen, Lome Fa'atau, Paul Steinmetz and Riki Flutey. First five-eighths David Howell kicked three penalties and three conversions from seven attempts and Flutey converted his own try.

Wellington led 18-0 at halftime.

The win gave Wellington hope that they can still scramble into the top-four playoffs, despite earlier losses to Bay of Plenty, Waikato and Southland.

Counties coach Andrew Talaimanu was at a loss to explain his side's poor showing after they had beaten Otago the previous week.

About all he could offer was that his players froze when pitted against the likes of Lomu, Umaga and Cullen.

Counties went long periods of the first half without the ball, and Wellington's strong tackling thwarted numerous promising moves in the second.

Umaga was delighted with his player's commitment in preventing Counties from crossing their line, but it was still not a totally convincing effort by Wellington.

The error rate again blighted Wellington's performance for a period both sides of halftime, and they probably bombed as many tries as they scored.

Wellington's lineout work was more accurate and they managed to win a lot of ball from Counties' throw.

Others to excel for Wellington were halfback Jason Spice and No 8 Jerry Collins.

- NZPA