Ioane brothers destroy Otago
AUCKLAND put championship leaders Otago firmly in their place with a sparkling 54-17 demolition job at Eden Park last night.
Outstanding centre Rieko Ioane scored a second consecutive hat-trick in the win, which saw Auckland narrowly miss out surpassing their previous biggest win (41 points) against Otago.
With his hat-trick, Ioane became just the fourth player in history to score consecutive national provincial championship hat-tricks – John Timu, Brendan Laney and Deon Muir also did it.
The win moved Auckland to second on the premiership ladder on 27 points with two games to play, although Taranaki will surpass them if they topple defending champions Canterbury in New Plymouth today.
Auckland punished an errorriddled Otago side with their game-breaking backs and had a bonus point before the halftime break.
Led by a stirling performance by captain Simon Hickey, Auckland never trailed and ran in seven tries to two in the win, which also saw them retain the Lin Colling Memorial Trophy.
While Hickey did miss a couple of kicks, he raised 100 points on the season when he converted Taleni Seu’s try, which he set up after shrugging off Tei Walden, in the 23rd minute.
He finished with 24 points, and scored his first try of the season a couple of minutes into the second half when he again bounced off Walden and dived over from close-range.
Auckland’s point-scoring blitz, which included first half tries by Rieko Ioane, Seu, Lolagi Visinia and Melani Nanai, was the last thing anyone would have predicted after viewing the opening 10 minutes.
Both teams struggled to hold on to the ball and, such was the error rate in the first 20 minutes, fans would have been forgiven for thinking the teams had either swapped the ball for a bar of soap or were playing in post tsunami conditions. However, as Otago continued to make blunder after blunder, Auckland began to run amok.
All seven of their tries were quality, but perhaps the best of all was Ioane’s second. It was a classic case of the younger brother working in sync with older brother and flanker Akira, who busted through a gap and expertly flicked an offload to his younger brother to gas Otago from 45m out.
His second try gave Auckland PHOTOSPORT a 41-10 lead early in the second half, before Hickey banged over a couple of penalties and Ioane finished his hat-trick with five minutes left on the clock.
For Otago, it was an unforgettable match and no doubt coach Cory Brown will be tempted to burn the match footage and just move on to their next match, against Counties Manukau.
After starting the season with six wins, the blue and golds have now dropped two games on the trot to premiership teams, and will lose their lead at the top of the championship standings if Wellington beat Manawatu in Palmerston North on Wednesday night.