Young Stallions handed harsh lesson

A young WaiCoa Bay Stallions team came away from Tauranga Domain with a painful lesson yesterday after suffering a 68-0 national premiership thumping at the hands of the in-form Counties Manukau Stingrays.

‘‘We were well beaten,’’ said Stallions coach Tony Lajpold. ‘‘They were smarter with everything they did compared to what we did.’’

But Lajpold did cut his young side some slack, saying while mistakes proved extremely costly the final scoreline failed to reflect the fact his players never gave up.

‘‘We have got a young side and it is not just about this year but the next three or four years. They’ve got to learn and they are hard lessons to learn, but lessons they have to learn,’’ he said.

The Stallions, who lost three of their selected players either on game day or the day before, must now gather themselves and travel this weekend to Whangarei to take on the Northland Swords before finishing at home against the Central Vipers.

The Vipers yesterday thrashed the Swords 74-16 in Wanganui.

‘‘Northland will be a different prospect up there and it is another long trip for us. We’ve only won one game; we’re in the same boat as Wellington and in front of Northland so we have to win our last two games to make sure we finish midtable.’’

Yesterday the Stallions were hit with injury problems before the match even started. Fullback Caleb Heke pulled out on Saturday after injuring his finger mucking around with a basketball, loose forward Jason Whareaitu was rulled out yesterday before kickoff with a chest infection and one of the reserve props also pulled out, laid low by a virus.

‘‘So there were three late changes but that’s no excuse for the score.

Young players did come to the fore, however, centre John Koko again playing well, as did teenage Waikato prop Mosese Mafi off the bench and young schoolboy second rower Isaiah Cooper-Tetevano, who was promoted into the starting side due to the late defections.

Lajpold said the Stallions had had some good patches in the match but were not consistent enough and never finished anything off.

‘‘We would make a break and have one or two in support, whereas they would make a break and have five. It was a pretty good team effort by them. Their speed at the play-the-ball and in everything they did was a lot faster than what we were doing,’’ he said.