Mustangs after complete performance
Manawatu Mustangs coach Haze Reweti is hopeful of his side completing an 80-minute performance in their last outing of the season.
Manawatu¯ play Bay of Plenty side Coastline at Kawerau this afternoon, their last game of the season.
The Mustangs are coming off a 24-22 loss to the Taranaki Sharks in Waitara last Saturday, where Taranaki won with a conversion on fulltime.
It was similar to the Mustangs’ other two games. They lost 24-22 in the dying minutes to the Northern Swords and lost 36-22 to the Wellington Orcas, having been locked 22-all going into the last quarter.
So Reweti wanted a consistent performance today against Coastline.
‘‘We looked good in patches [against Taranaki]. It’s the same as the rest of the games,’’ he said. ‘‘We look good in patches, but can’t get across the line right at the end.’’
Manawatu¯ have been good enough to beat all their opponents, sometimes holding comfortable leads at halftime, but haven’t been able to close games out.
Fading late in the game was something Reweti wanted to correct.
‘‘Hopefully this weekend we can show everyone what we can do and play some footy to our standard,’’ Reweti said.
‘‘There’s been three games where we’ve been up by more than one or two tries and lost right at the end.’’
Taranaki were similar to Manawatu¯ this year in they had no club competition and formed a rep team for these spring clashes.
Manawatu¯ ’s top performers from the Taranaki game, hooker Josh Fifita, second rower Josh Kerr and lock Woody Martin, are all expected to front against Coastline.
Manawatu¯ is out of the running to qualify for the next round of the national competition.
The winner of the game between the top two North Island sides this weekend, Wellington and Northern, will qualify for the next round and play the South Island winner as the competition continues.