TASMAN SEE YELLOW AND RED
Thursday night’s 40-26 Mitre 10 Cup premiership rugby win over Tasman has guaranteed Taranaki a semifinal spot. Now the challenge is to lock in a home play-off.
The six tries to four victory at Yarrow Stadium created several talking points, the major one being the two yellow cards to Tasman wing Viliami Lolohea for dangerous tackles on opposite Seta Tamanivalu while he was challenging for the ball in the air.
The second of those, which saw Lolohea sent from the field in the 26th minute, did not kill the match off as a contest with Tasman showing plenty of resolve to get back into the match just before the break and again when they conceded a fifth try shortly after halftime.
However, there was no
disguising the fact their defence was porous at times, especially through the midfield where Taranaki first five-eighth Stephen Perofeta was able to exploit the afforded space to set up a number of tries.
Tasman’s cause was also not helped in the second half when they were reduced to 13 men when fullback Jordan Will also received a yellow card for a deliberate knock down when Taranaki was on attack.
Taranaki now have a week to formulate a plan to wrest the Ranfurly Shield off Canterbury in Christchurch on Friday night, providing the holders fend off the challenge of Waikato on Saturday.
There is effectively a three-way battle between Taranaki, Canterbury and North Harbour for hosting rights for the premiership semifinals, although Tasman have an outside chance to move from fourth into a top two position with three round robin matches remaining.
Taranaki coach Colin Cooper thought they started Thursday’s match well as they continued to show signs of the improvement.
He acknowledged Tasman took a fair bit of stopping up front through their driving play but he was reasonably pleased with how they managed to counter it at times.
The one disappointment Cooper had was their inability to finish off a number of opportunities they created in the second half before the game effectively fell apart because of an extraordinary number of penalties dished out by referee Angus Maybey.
‘‘We let them back in but a win is a one I suppose,’’ he said.
‘‘They managed to get a fair bit of momentum with their pick and go around the ruck and when a team gets that they’re really hard to stop. We will have to have a good look at that because when we did try and stop it we got penalised a lot.’’
Seta Tamanivalu, who played his 50th game for Taranaki, said the milestone meant a lot to him.
‘‘It’s where my career started and I can look back to what I’ve achieved so far because of it, so it’s special.’’
He believed Lolohea had little defence around his two yellow cards given how clear the rules were about playing anyone in the air.
‘‘The rules are there to protect you because it was a bit dangerous. It was a bit of a strange game after that, I was sitting out there and it was getting a bit frustrating in the second half because we didn’t really stick to our plans because the boys got very excited and tried to push too much stuff.’’
Nevertheless, Tamanivalu thought the side was tracking well heading into some defining matches.
‘‘I think we are heading in the right direction for top spot but it’s going to take a lot of hard work.’’