Sevens: Bay teams run into form for nationals

Trinity Neera-Spooner, best known for his deeds for Hawke's Bay, steps through a gap for the Bay men's side against Manawatu. Photo / Andrew WArner

The Bay of Plenty men's and women's sevens teams appear to be on track for an improved showing at this weekend's Bayleys National Sevens in Rotorua following promising performances at Saturday's Bay Engineers Supplies Provincial Sevens at Blake Park.

The men looked impressive in beating Canterbury (21-7), Manawatu (26-21) and North Harbour (31-5) in pool play, dropping just the one match against Auckland (33-7) in the round robin before being pipped by Wellington (17-12) in the playoff for third and fourth.

The women, who look to have made marked improvement in every respect in the last year, beat Waikato first up (15-5) before competitive losses to powerful Auckland (19-5) and Wellington (19-7) ahead of a lopsided plate semifinal loss to Taranaki (26-5).

Bay of Plenty men's coach Peter Woods was happy with his side's performance considering he was tinkering with combinations for the nationals.

"We came in with 14 players so for the first two games we had two teams going to give everyone a trial," he said.

"As the day went through we started to mix it up to get a strong seven. It was good for our guys after last year's tournament, obviously we all know the result last year when the side came last.

"Even against Wellington I could have probably fielded a stronger side but we had to give those guys a go. Wellington could have easily run away with it, but the boys came back and finished strongly."

The side, featuring new additions Trinity Neera-Spooner and Bryn Uriarau from Hawke's Bay in place of rested local players Akiro Mako and Matt Clutterbuck, left Blake Park for a recovery session at the beach ahead of a tough session at Mount Maunganui College yesterday morning designed to replicate the demands of the two-day nationals.

Woods said Uriarau had signed with the Bay union but was unsure about the status or plans of Neera-Spooner.

The women's side is set to be bolstered by the return of former New Zealand Sevens player Lavinia Gould from a drug suspension.

Gould, who played one Sevens tournament for the Bay at the beginning of 2012 before returning to live in Australia, was given a two-year ban by the IRB after testing positive for banned stimulant methylhexaneamine (MHA) at a tournament in Dubai in December 2012.

Auckland looked the team to beat in both divisions, with the men (26-14) and women (52-0) recording impressive victories in the finals against Counties Manukau and Canterbury respectively.