Loosehead prop John Mathias was Uawa’s player of the day, YMP coach Tony Barbarich making the Bumbles’ player of the day a team award.
Horouta have been five years out of club rugby’s ranks and Tapuae gave them a tough reintroduction, the game being moved from Waikirikiri Park to the Oval No.2 ground. Two of the visitors — fullback Kyoni-Tyrese Te Amo-Poki and centre Iowane Filimoni — scored hat-tricks, and left wing Ruka Hailey scored a double.
Tapuae openside flanker Atonio Vukicicakaudrove (their player of the day), halfback Kingi Te Amo, first five-eighth Ceizar Fasso and reserve fetcher Clint Taumata-Albert all scored.
Tapuae led 43-0 at the break and Te Amo-Poki put on a superb goal-kicking display to convert eight of his side’s 12 tries.
Horouta assistant coach Renata Maraki and Tapuae’s evergreen rake, Wayne Hema, agreed that Vukicicakaudrove’s opposite, Antonio Wright-Ferguson, put in a fantastic match-effort around the park as Te Waka’s player of the day.
Hema has tussled with Horouta for 15 years: “Antonio was a workhorse for them defensively today but beyond that, it’s just really cool to see him and his boys back out there this season because I made my premier debut at 18 against Horouta, and they were always tough.”
Maraki concurred: “Emotions were running high for us. Every week we’ll wear our jerseys with pride, take it one game at a time, and take learnings out of this clash with a balanced side.”
Referee Tony Watson ran an incident-free game.
Les Thomas took the whistle for OBM’s home game on Oval No.1 with Wairoa Athletic. The visitors were well worth their 24-point margin of victory.
The champion Athletic unit led at halftime and, in all, scored five tries — through tighthead prop Jordan Biddle, huge No.8-cum-lock Adriaan Brits, blindside flanker Aaron Ioane, left wing Doug Vehikite and lock Brodie Taylor, whose second-row partner Toby Wilkinson was the visitors’ player of the day.
OBM’s try-scorer and player of the day was right wing Josh Talaese, who with ball in hand ran hard and straight from start to finish. Duran Smith, at lock and later blindside flanker, also impressed with robust, physical play for OBM, whose player-coach Clint Pirihi had 26 players available to suit up on Saturday.
Nuhaka V8s players — spurred on by cheers of “Up the Star!” and led by captain and second-five Russell Love — had a fine win against Ngatapa.
Wairoa-based referee Matt Smith’s rulings and control were much appreciated by both teams and the crowd of 200 at Nuhaka Domain.
For Nuhaka, hooker Nathaniel Solomon scored two tries, and No.8 Aoterangi Cotter and left wing Ilisoni Duruwaqa scored a try each.
Nuhaka led 15-3 at halftime, the Ngatapa points coming from a penalty goal kicked by first-five Akuila Nokata.
V8s player of the day, openside flanker Tahuwaka Edwards, converted the last try of the game — Cotter’s score — for 22-3.
Ngatapa player of the day was tighthead prop Chris Kaa.
Veteran reserve lock Pat Thomson, deputising for his captain Flynn Burkett, said: “It was a great game to start the season. We played well and we’ll get better. We held our own up front and the skipper at No.8 played 80 minutes of good, hard rugby.”
