Stage set in Nash Cup
Taradale play their way in to meet Hastings Rugby and Sports for first-round glory
Taradale guaranteed a defence of Hawke’s Bay rugby Premier first-round trophy, the Nash Cup, with a comfortable win over Havelock North on Saturday.
The 50-24 win on Taradale’s home ground at Tareha Reserve gave the maroons a fourth win in five Pool 1 matches, enough to take them into the final this Saturday against Hastings Rugby and Sports, who completed Pool 2 unbeaten with a 34-17 home win over Clive at Elwood Park, Hastings.
There were encouraging homematch results for two of the perennial triers of Premier rugby ahead of the 8-team Maddison Trophy championship which starts on May 15, with Tamatea beating Napier Pirate 42-14 in Hastings and Central beating Napier Tech Old Boys 30-24 in Waipukurau.
Tamatea have won the Maddison Trophy just once, back in the intercity days of 1983, and in the 33 years of the Hawke’s Bay-wide competition with playoffs, have reached the semifinals only twice, in 2003 and 2005. Central have reached the semifinals just once, in 2007.
In Saturday’s other match, Napier Old Boys Marist had a 55-33 win over MAC in Flaxmere.
It was a good day for the tryscorers with nine by Napier OBM, eight for Taradale and seven from Tamatea, and losing sides MAC, Napier Tech and Havelock North each earning four-try bonuses, as superfluous as they were in the final count. A try by MAC halfback John Ika gave him six for the season making him the top try-scorer in the Nash Cup to date.
But of the 52 tries, just 27 were converted, Havelock North’s Trinity Neera-Spooner scoring just four points for his side but becoming the leading points-scorer with 46, more than half of his side’s total to date.
With the intervention of the Covid-19 crisis, Taradale have held the cup since it was last contested in 2019, but they were beaten by Hastings in last year’s Maddison Trophy final.
While Hastings had secured their Nash Cup final place with a crossover-match win the previous weekend, Taradale needed another victory to stay in front of Napier Old Boys Marist.
Opponents in eight Maddison Trophy finals and three semifinals since the championships went Hawke’s Bay-wide in 1988, village sides Taradale and Havelock North faced radically different scenarios on Saturday, with Taradale hot favourites and Havelock North finishing pool play without a win and having a week earlier been consigned to a new second division for the remainder of the season.
Taradale had to overcome plenty of early enthusiasm from the young and rebuilding Havelock North side and, after a 7-all deadlock and then
being down five points, took the lead with their second converted try late in the second quarter. By halftime, they were well in charge, up 31-12.
Hastings were also in charge by halftime of their match, with four tries and a 22-0 lead, and are expected to host the final at Elwood Park on Saturday, with other Premier sides set to take a week off.
While Old Boys Marist found MAC a bit to handle until well into the second half, the scores being tied twice before the Napier side pulled away in the last quarter, it was a good shakedown before starting a Maddison Trophy campaign aimed at winning the championship for the fourth time in six years.
MAC conceded two converted tries in the absence of sin-binned Everard Reid.
The return of former Magpies
loosie Nui Bartlett as coach of Tamatea, after seven years in Queensland, was one of the telling factors of the weekend’s games, as his side claimed a third win and a fourth bonus point.
It was a good launching pad for the Maddison Trophy, with a muchyearned weekend off for player recovery also a relief to Pirate coach Andy Lord as he starts to plan his club’s way back to the top grade.
Much like their glory days of the early 1980s, the whanau links at Tamatea are huge – Bartlett counts six nephews and five cousins among a team in which most started their rugby with the club’s children’s grades, and now has the “influence” from the successful Hastings Boys’ High first XVs of the last few years.
Central’s win, capping a clubrecord 250th Premier match for
39-year-old forward pack rock Warwick Slingsby, was also a sign of things to come.
Havelock North, the most successful Maddison Trophy club over the past three decades, and Napier Pirate, winners of the trophy as recently as 2015, now join a new eight-team second division competition, named Division 1.
They joining six Town and Country grade sides — Premier Reserve teams Napier OBM, Napier Tech OB and Taradale and previous Division 2 sides Maraenui, Aotea, and Otane — the top two clubs without Maddison Trophy sides chasing promotion back to Premier for the Nash Cup round in 2022.
Maraenui and Napier OBM play Saturday’s Town pool final and Dannevirke side Aotea meet Otane in the Country pool final.