The Kaupoi have won five of nine games, Mid-Canterbury four, the Coast having pipped tomorrow's guests 36-34 at Ashburton in Round 2 . . . Nathan McCloy's 37-metre penalty attempt from the left touch on fulltime swung across the face of goal, and the Coast took only their second win in nine trips to the Showgrounds. It was their fifth victory overall in the 20 Coast-Hammer clashes since 1991.
Tomorrow, Mid-Canterbury will be in search of a second Lochore Cup title. Their great triumphs on the grand stage have been victory in the second division of the South Island National Provincial Championship in 1980 and 1984, the third division overall in 1994 and 1998, the Meads Cup in 2013 and 2014, and the Lochore Cup in 2017.
Ngāti Porou East Coast won the third-division NPC title in 1999 and 2000, and the Meads Cup in 2012. The memories of 54 consecutive losses and the 2975 days between wins have been expelled — or exorcised — in a region where rugby is a family, club and community sporting faith.
NPEC head coach Hosea Gear's three-year mentorship of the Sky Blues has been transformative. With captain and halfback Sam Parkes's great example on and off the field, the Kaupoi are fit, sharp, disciplined, skilful and — most dangerous of all — confident.
Gone is the Wild West, harum-scarum, chip-kick-and-chase from out of their own in-goal area; in is the strong, close support from forwards with a work-rate to match any Heartland Championship pack, and backs on the hip of anyone who creates space or makes a bust.
Gear said: “We've prepared for this game as we have every other week, the only difference being the media hype, and our biggest challenge has been to contain that because everyone's excited.”
Parkes is of a similar mind: “The boys are keen, but the trick is to control that energy, implement what we want to achieve.”
Parkes was 18 when he replaced former Coast captain and halfback Charlie Harrison in the 57th minute of the 2012 Meads Cup final. Now he has 62 Sky Blue caps and pushes the likes of South Canterbury halfback William Wright — Heartland Rugby's Player of the Year last season — harder than anyone else.
Mid-Canterbury's Tyler Blackburn and Tom Reekie are good value at 9 and 10 respectively. McCloy did everything he could to get his team home in the first meeting between the Hammers and NPEC this season, with a try, four conversions and two of three penalties.
Blackburn says he and his outsides must express the talent they have, with his role being to put his mark on the game and drive the forest-green-and-yellows around the park.
Blackburn's co-captain, tighthead prop Adam Williamson, said the Coast team he faced on August 27 were the best NPEC crew he'd met since debuting in 2015. The physicality, aggressiveness and pace at which their forwards began Game 2 were major factors in the result. Before that last encounter, Mid-Canterbury had won the last five games between the teams, including the last three played in Ruatoria.
In the first 12 months of his two-year turn with Ashburton's finest, Mid-Canterbury head coach John Sherratt has shown he has a positive outlook and approach, and a keen eye for detail.
“We expect a massive atmosphere up at Ruatoria and we want to play to our potential, with all parts of our game coming together for 80 minutes,” he said.
“As a team, we've grown each week, developed belief in each other, had fun and travelled well. We're excited and ready to walk towards a big challenge.”
Sherratt has made no changes to the starting 15 or the 23 who won the southern derby last Saturday.
Left wing Raitube Vasurakuta, who scored a late try against the Sky Blues at the Showgrounds, got a double against the Old Golds in the 5 v 8 Lochore Cup semifinal.
Of the 15 who began the match against NPEC two weeks into the competition, only six will start tomorrow. Four of them are forwards: scrum-anchor Williamson, lock Logan Bonnington (in his 50th game for the Hammers), openside flanker Kaydis Hona and No.8 Michael Hennings.
NPEC strongman Perrin Manuel — son of 1999 NZ Rugby Awards Coach of the Year Joe McClutchie, who that season led the Sky Blues to the first of two consecutive third-division titles — scored their second try against Mid-Canterbury when the teams last met and so knows what it takes, literally, for Coast teams to get over the line.
Manuel has been granite for the Kaupoi at scrum-time and their famous rolling maul, a tried-and-true weapon, could be in hot demand at Whakarua Park if it is used successfully early in the game.
Veteran hooker Joe Royal, lock Khian Westrupp, Levin hat-trick hero Parkes and talented first-five Carlos Kemp are but four of those capable of sparking a big heave or second effort from the Sky Blues.
The Coast have named the same starting 15 as that for last week's semi, with one switch in position. Hoani Te Moana will swap 7 for 6 with the imposing Jorian Tangaere.
The last three men to wear the hat of the Kaupoi — East Coast Cowboy and MVP (most valuable player), a nod to 28 (Maori) Battalion — at the business end of the season have been second-five Te Manu Herewini, fetcher Will Bolingford, and Westrupp. These three are gritty performers — in Bolingford's case to the extent of bouncing back to take on The 'Nua, having had his nose broken the week before — and typify an unselfish, team-first attitude.
NPEC loosehead prop Hakarangi Tichborne and Methven's Hennings won their teams' MVP awards at the Showgrounds. Only close scrutiny reveals their true value as hard-working contributors, whether that be at restarts, lineouts or the breakdown.
Were Tichborne, a try-scorer against Poverty Bay in Round 4, or any other Ruatoria City player to score a representative try on the occasion of not just this Lochore Cup Final but City's centenary, at their home ground, a rousing cheer may well go up.
The person best-placed to appreciate that would be East Coast Rugby Football Union patron and recently retired Gisborne District Council Matakaoa-Waiapu ward member Bill Burdett, a life member of both the union and Ruatoria City, president of the union in 2012, chairman in 1999, and attendee at both the 50th and 75th anniversaries of Ruatoria City.
A crowd of around 350 attended the match on August 27 at Ashburton. The biggest crowd Whakarua Park has drawn was 6000-plus, on October 14, 2001, for the second-division 2 v 3 semifinal against Nelson Bays, a 21-12 victory to the Sky Blues.
Covid-19 has curtailed large gatherings during the past two years, but the word that accommodation in Gisborne and on the Coast this Labour Weekend is being feverishly sought suggests a big turnout at the headquarters of NPEC rugby tomorrow.
The idea that the Lochore Cup could soon sit alongside the Bill Osborne Taonga, the Anaru “Skip” Paenga Memorial Shield, the Arthur Wickes Memorial Trophy and the Basil Simpson Memorial Trophy, is a powerful one.
