Pirongia Bs claim first win of season
Side run in six impressive tries in convincing victory over Frankton
With the A teams’ game postponed, the Pirongia B side played some outstanding rugby to beat Frankton B 38-17 at Pirongia Domain on Saturday.
Their forwards dominated and their backs gained in confidence as the game progressed and Pirongia were able to score six top tries to win their first game of the season.
Pirongia scored first after five minutes when Cameron Coombes made a great run down the side of the field. He then offloaded to Alan “Nunzy” Nunn who went over untouched in “Gooka’s Corner”.
Frankton then had a period on the attack, but Pirongia were able to hold them out and in the 15th minute Tom Poole took a great offload from Tyreece O’Neill and sprinted 30 metres to score under the posts.
With Kingston Grant converting successfully, Pirongia held a well-deserved 12-0 lead.
Frankton hit back not long after to close the gap, but Pirongia replied almost immediately with a Greg Gane try under the sticks.
Grant was again successful with the conversion and
Pirongia went into halftime with a 14-point buffer, 19-5.
The second half was very similar to the first with Frankton having large periods on attack, but again with some great defence, Pirongia were able to hold them out.
When Pirongia went on attack they were able to score when Grant came into the forwards and was able to barge his way over from five metres out.
Frankton scored a welltaken try of their own and with 20 minutes to go the score was 24-10.
Pirongia were not about to let the visitors back into the game. The forwards made huge ground up the field with O’Neill and Andy Fullerton leading the charge and with some fresh legs introduced, Pirongia were able to score two more tries to Tyler-Joel Makaea.
Unfortunately, Pirongia let in a soft try at the end to finish the scoring 38-17.
The player of the day went to Fullerton who was strong all day taking the ball up and very aggressive in his tackling.
O’Neill was also strong, especially in his running, bumping off tackle after tackle. Armond Onekawa was impressive at fullback, making some outstanding breaks.
Pirongia Colts pulled off a great come-from-behind win to upset the more-fancied Hamilton Old Boys Colts on Saturday at Pirongia Domain.
In a backwards-andforwards first half, it took HOB 21 minutes to break the Pirongia defence and score their first try, with a second converted try following five minutes later to give HOB a 12-0 halftime lead.
Strong attacking play by Flynn Wuest and Daniel Webber had Pirongia hammering the HOB line just before halftime and just when Pirongia looked to spin the
ball wide, the HOB wing intercepted to head off for a “14-point try”.
However, a brilliant chase by Wuest and Hayden Beare had him run down and the ball turned over to keep the score to 12-0.
The second half started with strong tackling from loose forwards Jay Seebeck and player of the day Cody Friedrich-Taylor that led to some sustained attack by Pirongia.
This eventually had Mitch Zeuren crash over from close to the line for Pirongia’s first try — the resulting sideline conversion closing the gap to 14-7.
However, tries at the 50-minute and 65-minute marks seemed to have put the game out of Pirongia’s reach at 22-7, and with HOB back on the attack, Pirongia’s fate seemed sealed.
A beautiful read of the play had Jason Hill intercept and sprint 78m to score under the bar with the resulting conversion
from Zeuren closing the gap to 22-14.
With their tails in the air, Pirongia swept back onto attack and from a 7m scrum, the Pirongia team worked a blindside move where Max Frandi strolled in untouched to close the score to 22-19 at the 75-minute mark.
From the kick-off, HOB fought their way back into the Pirongia half but the Pirongia backs were running rampant.
Securing possession in their own quarter, Pirongia spun the ball through the backs and opened up the HOB defence — some beautiful interplay between the flying Finn Mclean on the wing and Zeuren had Mclean draw the last defender to give Zeuren a 20m run in for Pirongia to steal a 24-22 victory on the hooter.
Blake Clarke and Manaia Murphy worked tirelessly in the forwards all day while Wuest and Webber were menacing on attack and defence in the backs.
The second half was very similar to the first with Frankton having large periods on attack, but again with some great defence, Pirongia were able to hold them out.