Umaga’s boys make championship final easily in end
COUNTIES MANUKAU coach Tana Umaga never gave up believing his side could beat Southland in the NPC Championship semifinal yesterday, despite trailing 20-6 just before the break.
At that stage it looked like all of the hard work the Steelers had done to finish top of the Championship points table would come to nothing as the Stags’ tactic of pinning their opposition in their 22 and waiting for the mistakes was working.
But Counties
are
a
side
that pride themselves in scoring great tries and they managed to pull six of them out of the bag to book a home final against Otago on Friday night.
‘‘ I knew we had time and a chance to come back,’’ Umaga said.
‘‘ We’ve shown that we can come back from being down on points and it doesn’t really faze us.
‘‘We were making a lot of mistakes in our half and you could tell that’s the way Southland wanted to play the game.
‘‘Playing in pressure games and this late in the season is new to our guys, but we came back. We’ve got to go back to believing in how we play and also execution is key for us.
‘‘Once we get that right we’re a hard team to beat. Sometimes we over think things and think we have to play a certain way, but we have to play the Steelers way.’’
Southland coach Dave Henderson was struggling to cope with the news that Hoani MacDonald had to be rushed to hospital dur- ing the game. He was able to give us a few comments on the game though and said his players will learn from this.
‘‘We really put it said.
‘‘You can take it to them and they struggle, but our composure went in the second half and that’s cost us all season. But I thought in the first half we played very well. But we’ve got a young team and we’re rebuilding.’’
It didn’t take long for Counties to get the scoreboard moving with Baden Kerr kicking two penalties in the first nine minutes and the early points continued with Southland halfback Tayler Adams scoring in the left corner.
After two Eade penalties Blues bound Marty McKenzie scored the Stags’ second try as the semifinal looked to be slipping away from Counties. The Steelers needed to
to
them,’’ he be the next to score and they did by using their backs to hit gaps at pace and Sherwin Stowers raced in for the try.
Early in the second half Bundee Aki caught a no look pass from Tony Pulu to score Counties’ next try.
Kerr kicked two penalties to one from Eade to make it a one point game, then just before the hour mark Rey Lee-Lo took the lead for Counties with another try coming from their gifted backline.
The match was clinched when Tony Pulu scored a breathtaking 55m try.
DJ Forbes and Lee-Lo second time completed scoring for Counties. for the the try