North Otago still in play for Meads Cup spot after patchy victory Heartland Championship
The scores
TAKE the points and move on.
North Otago held on to beat bottomofthetable West Coast 2619 on Saturday.
The win kept North Otago in fourth place heading into next week’s final round robin game and kept West Coast winless for the season.
While North Otago will be pleased with the result, it was far from a pretty performance from the home side at Whitestone Contracting Stadium in Oamaru.
The match summed up the Heartland Championship season for the Old Golds: moments of brilliance paired with lapses in defence, discipline and control of the ball.
They were on fire at the start, when Epineri Logavatu stole the ball at West Coast’s lineout. The backline moved it quickly and second five Tini Feke broke the line to score. Ben McCarthy
North Otago .................................. 26
Tini Feke, Mone Samate, Ben McCarthy, Junior Fakatoufifita tries; McCarthy 3 con West Coast ........................................... 19
Elliot Smith, Joseph Scott, Jacob Lowe tries; Logan Ross 2 con
Halftime: North Otago 1914.
converted to lead 70.
Winger Mone Samate went over for a converted try in the 13th minute to extend the lead to 140.
From the kickoff, the Old Golds kept it tight and shifted the ball in until they spotted space down the right side. McCarthy had speed to burn and put his foot down to run in a 65m try.
He converted his own try, and suddenly it was 190 and you got the feeling the Old Golds were on their way to thumping West Coast the way they had against Buller and HorowhenuaKapiti at home.
But then it came to a grinding halt.
North Otago was guilty of trying to be too fancy, testing wraparound set moves that did not pay off, popping inaccurate passes and starting to fall off tackles.
It let West Coast captain Elliot Smith run in his team’s first points of the day. Winger Logan Ross converted the try to make it 197.
Then came North Otago’s kicking mistakes — putting the ball dead when aiming for a lineout and dead straight from the kickoff.
After North Otago was penalised, it was caught on the back foot when West Coast took a quick tap, and had some lovely touches to finally score through Joseph Scott to close the gap to 1914 at halftime.
The second half was much of the same.
After being camped in West Coast’s 22m, North Otago had three monster scrums but was unable to make something from it.
From broken play — where the Old Golds are generally deadly — big No 8 Junior Fakatoufifita broke through a couple of tackles to score. It pushed North Otago ahead 2614.
Then it was back to mistakes and messy play from both sides. West Coast scored again and nearly threatened to take the spoils at the end.
North Otago coughed up penalties in its own 22m and West Coast nearly scored before it butchered the opportunity on fulltime.
It was a tough game to take anything from and North Otago will need to be better when it comes up against King Country this Saturday in a straight shootout for the final Meads Cup place.