Hawke's Bay players celebrate a try in their win over North Harbour in Napier on Saturday. Photo / Kerry Marshall, Photosport
One of the biggest NPC matches of the season is in the offing at McLean Park after the Hawke’s Bay Magpies claimed their third win in three games in the 2025 competition.
The 36-22 win over North Harbour at McLean Park, Napier, on Saturday night pitched the Magpies into a clash with fellow-unbeaten and former nemesis Canterbury back at the park this Friday night.
The Magpies have attracted two of the bigger crowds of the NPC season to date: 4152 at the first-round match against Counties-Manukau and 4764 on Saturday night.
CEO Jay Campbell is “hopeful” of a crowd around 7000 this week, based on the current good starts, and the drawing power of Canterbury and their depth of Super Rugby talent.
But there’s also the history of three wins for Hawke’s Bay and a loss by just four points in the past four matches against Canterbury, dating back to 2020, when a 20-19 victory was Hawke’s Bay’s first win over the southern giants since 1982.
Starting at microscopic TAB odds on Saturday, with wins over Counties Manukau and Otago alongside Harbour’s losses to Manawatu and Taranaki, the Magpies struggled for much of Saturday night.
They led just 19-10 at halftime, after 40 minutes played mainly about the middle of the park, and found themselves down 22-19 with 19 minutes to play.
It could have been worse, for Harbour first five-eighths Oscar Koller had missed both a penalty goal and a conversion from in front of the posts.
He then opened the door to the Magpies when his clearing kick was charged down by opposite number Harry Godfrey to score the try that sparked the comeback - the first of three Magpies tries in the last 15 minutes.
The effort by Godfrey, who also kicked three conversions, earned the four-tries bonus point that, along with the win, put the Magpies equal on points at the top of the table with Taranaki, who a couple of hours earlier also claimed five points, smashing Auckland 50-8 at Eden Park.
In all, the Magpies scored six tries, including one in each half to everywhere man and centre Nick Grigg, and a popular first-half touchdown for captain and lock Tom Parsons, his 14th in 98 matches for the Magpies.
The others went to halfback Folau Fakatava, in his first starting line-up performance of the season, and wing Lukas Ripley, two minutes from the end.
Meanwhile, in the earlier match, a mainly young Hawke’s Bay Tui women’s team, with 12 of the 23 making their Farah Palmer Cup women’s NPC debuts, opened their competition, beaten 72-0 by Canterbury.
Having beaten newly-promoted Manawatu in the first round, when the Tui had a bye, Canterbury scored 12 tries, going to a 31-0 lead at halftime.
They looked on target for a sixth title in nine years, despite having at least seven players away at the women’s World Cup in England.
The Tui didn’t give up, but their own handling errors and the visitors’ experience and slicker approach resulted in several tries ranging from 40-50 metres out.
With the score at 45-0 in the 13th minute of the second half, there was a lengthy injury break, after which Canterbury scored five more tries, including a second for wing and former Taranaki Whio player Louise Blyde, looking strikingly similar to cousin and Black Ferns star Michaela Brake (nee Blyde).
The Tui will have their second match next Sunday against Manawatu Cyclones in Palmerston North, in the same arena that was the venue when the two unions played what’s now regarded as the first women’s inter-provincial rugby match, in 1980.
Manawatu bounced back from their first-round loss to beat Bay of Plenty 45-31 on Saturday in Tauranga.
Doug Laing has been a reporter for 52 years, more than 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, at the Central Hawke’s Bay Press, the Napier Daily Telegraph and Hawke’s Bay Today, since its establishment in 1999. He has covered most aspects of general news and sport.