Napier wins Ross Shield rugby

The Napier team celebrates after securing the Ross Shield for 2022 with five wins in five matches in Dannevirke. Photo / Paul Taylor

Napier has regained the Ross Shield for supremacy in Hawke's Bay primary schools rugby.

The team completed the competition with a fifth win from five games by beating Hastings West 10-5 on the last day of the tournament at Dannevirke's Rugby Park.

The two sides shared the honours when Napier last got a hand on the trophy in 2018 and with Hastings West having had two draws earlier in the week had another hand on the trophy before today's match started.

As a result of having had a loss and the two draws, regular top-side Hastings West had just two wins from its five matches.

Hastings East beat Wairoa 53-12 to claim second place with three wins, and Central Hawke's Bay, at one stage ahead 17-3 before a home-side comeback, beat Dannevirke 31-24 in the last match, winning country teams prize the Life Members Salver.

As well as the Shield, the Napier team received the Ron Pierce Trophy, for best all-round performance and behaviour, but Dannevirke ended the tournament with one of the most-sought prizes, No 8 Te Tahi Rautahi winning the Taupo Trophy as named Player of the Tournament, a trophy once won by eventual Magpies, Super Rugby and All Blacks star Israel Dagg.

Rautahi is the younger brother of Tawera Rautahi who when the tournament was last held in Dannevirke in 2016 - also the venue for Napier's last outright Shield triumph - was award the Jarrod Cunningham Trophy and scholarship.

The Jarrod Cunningham Trophy award this year recognised the performance of female players and was awarded to Napier No 8 Elley-May Taylor and Hastings West wing Keighley-Rein Araia, in a presentation made by Wairoa manager Danny Whatuira, who had been her sub-union's first female Ross Shield player.