In the highly competitive Open Mens Grade, the home town side of Manawatu faced off against perennial heavyweights, Canterbury.
Benn Seeback troubled the scorers early on by intercepting a wayward Manawatu pass and proceeding the length of the field for the opener. It didn't take long for Manawatu to reply though, as they used their hole chopping skills to full extent with Paul Davis crashing over to make it 1-1.
Following this opening exchange, both sides became caught in a battle of yards, with neither side making it to the five regularly enough to cause a scoring threat. It took a nice piece of innovation to break the deadlock. Following a long ball shut down in the corner, Manawatu kept the ball wide and brought it back infield through three sets of hands for Jordan Bunce to waltz in for a touchdown.
Canterbury were right back level within a minute with Michael Cavanagh scoring in the corner with an acrobatic finish. This set the tone for a match where neither side could hold onto the lead for an extended period of time. Manawatu put their nose ahead with a Beaudene Waaka intercept before Canterbury's Brock Ashby was set away down the sideline for a 3-3 scoreline.
In a contest that featured many often seen set plays using long balls and stepback variations, Manawatu scored their next touchdown using a second man play to create an overlap on the right hand side. The right edge of Canterbury's defence were unsure how to deal with this at the time as Te Aorere Pewhairangi strolled in on the wing. Once again the leading side could not hold their advantage as the scoring ping-ponged back and forth. Ashby scored a second try down the wing very similar to his first, to make the score 4-4 at halftime.
Manawatu showed more variation than their Canterbury counterparts on attack and opened the second half with a well executed second phase play to pull ahead 5-4. Whitiaua Black did the damage in the middle and Eugene Hepi finished off out wide. Canterbury were proving capable of replying but not taking the lead for themselves. Cavanagh scored his second and Otere Black put the home side ahead by one, not for the first time.
Canterbury had been trying the long ball all day with mixed results. This time it came off as Shaun Bell had enough space to dive into the corner. The score now locked at 6-6. The game needed one team to take over from the ever changing lead. The home side pushed ahead again through Lani Kawai and this time held on through the return set from Canterbury. The killer blow came as Hepi slipped through the line and fed Bunce for a two touchdown buffer. With time running out Canterbury pushed hard for an unlikely comeback, but an unfortunate leg injury to Seebeck, halted the game for several minutes and took the sting out of the final minutes. Manawatu played out the final two minutes to win 8-6.
Last Modified on 02/03/2012 13:20