Black relives ‘that’ moment

As the ball left Otere Black’s kicking tee at fulltime of Manawatu’s match against Southland, he turned his back to it and raised his arms.

The 21-year-old knew the ball was about to sail through the uprights to spare Manawatu their blushes with a 34-31 win in Palmerston North on Friday night.

It took most of the most of the Turbos’ other players and fans a couple more seconds to celebrate as they anxiously waited for the assistant touch judges to raise their flags.

‘‘It was one of those moments that you dream of and I loved it,’’ Black said. ‘‘I felt pretty good, I had kicked pretty well in that first half so I was pretty confident in myself.’’

But the last-gasp victory should have never been on the cards for the Turbos after they raced out to a 24-0 lead at halftime.

It was the second consecutive week the Turbos have let a team back into the game after holding a big lead - they were up 17-0 against Northland the week prior with a try three minutes from time enough for the 34-27 win.

‘‘It is something we need to work on moving forward,’’ Black said. ‘‘We can’t afford to slip up like that.’’

‘‘I think we got a bit too complacent and a bit too comfortable. We are pretty confident about things, but it is just not good enough.’’

The way they fell apart to let Southland back into the game had to have coach Jeremy Cotter tearing his hair out.

‘‘It is not cricket, you can’t declare when you get a good score,’’ Cotter said. ‘‘How to lock a game down when you are up is an issue.’’

‘‘We need some sort of default and back-up. The way we were using the ball was too predictable. It is matter of taking what we were doing on the training field and putting it out in the game.’’

Twenty-five turnovers conceded, 11 handling errors and 13 missed tackles paint the picture of how Manawatu let Southland get back into the game.

But surprisingly, they many of those same issues were present in the first half as well.

Cotter said they did not get past three phases with the ball once in the opening 40 minutes.

Lineouts remaining the major concern with five lost and many others leading to messy ball or penalties.

But that did not stop Manawatu racking up points.

Callum Gibbins picked up a try from a 40m gallop down the blindside, while Ngani Laumape added a hat-trick.

It was the first time Manawatu has won two consecutive games to open their NPC season since 2001.

They will need to make more history if they want to claim the Ranfurly Shield from Waikato on Sunday.

They have not won three games in a row to start the season since 1996.