21-year drought ends for Albion
Albion-Excelsior beat Riverton 15-10 to win the division three title in a tense decider on Saturday.
The Gore-based club travelled to Riverton.
It took until the final few of minutes of the game to seal the win in a thrilling final.
Albion-Excelsior led 10-5 at halftime and midway through the second half Riverton levelled the scores at 10-10 to set up an intriguing finish.
In the 78th minute AlbionExcelsiorbroke the deadlock when Josh Cameron crossed for the match-winner.
Loosehead prop Wallace Hetaraka, who doubles as the Albion-Excelsior Rugby Club president, said it was a great win for the club.
‘‘It was a brilliant final, too bad the wind was coming in with ice on it,’’ he said.
‘‘The paddock wasn’t the best of conditions either.
‘‘Full credit to Riverton, great team, great club, it was a great clean final,’’ he said.
The club has had success at the president’s grade level.
Hetaraka said Saturday’s win ended a drought as far as competition wins in the main Southland senior divisions.
He said you have to go back to Albion’s Galbraith Shield win in 1995 to find the club’s last title in one of the top three senior competitions.
‘‘We are ecstatic with our year,’’ he said. ’’ Our ambition at the start was to try make the top six and to build the team.
‘‘We hit that by halfway through the season and just went from there.’’
It has been an up and down couple of decades for the Gore club.
After winning the Galbraith Shield in 1995 they started to struggle and combined with Pioneer as the two clubs looked to build for the future.
It was a merger that didn’t work.
The club also had another tilt at playing premier rugby a few years ago but they struggled.
The decision has been made to rebuild from the bottom up and the first phase is now complete with a division three win.
‘‘It has been an extended amount of time for us so the club, in general, is really happy,’’ Hetaraka said about the win.
‘‘We joined up with Pioneer many years ago and that didn’t last for too long through old school politics you might say.
‘‘So it’s been quite a big rebuild for us since then.
‘‘We got a good contingency of first XV players from last season and they are young fellas who just want to play.’’
Waiau Star are the Southland wide division two club rugby competition winners after a tight 19-17 win over Mataura on Saturday, writes John Langford.
The playing surface at the Tuatapere Domain was extremely testing, but the teams managed to put on an entertaining match. Waiau Star dominated the first half and earned an 11 point lead through a try to Jimmy Ferris and two penalty goals to Nick Edgerton.
On the stroke of half time Mataura scored a converted try but immediately after the resumption Danny Verdon scored to give the locals some temporary breathing space.
Spurred on by their vocal support crew Mataura kept up a strong effort throughout.
With 10 minutes remaining a Mataura conversion attempt bounced off the crossbar and the upright which if successful would have took the game into extra time. Waiau coach Gerry Adams said: ‘‘The ball handling was very good considering the conditions.
‘‘Both teams had great support and the game was played in good spirit.
‘‘Playing on our home track was a big advantage.’’
Mataura coach Jason Bishop was gracious in defeat.
‘‘They deserved to win, they played good territory rugby.
‘‘It was unreal field conditions, no excuses from us though, we had our chances.’’
‘‘We had a brilliant support crew and they enjoyed yesterday’s game and we celebrated a good a season with a couple of hakas.’’