Hikurangi continued their perfect start to the season by overpowering Marist 30-8 at Kensington Park. The Hikurangi forwards didn't shirk their work against a young but enthusiastic Marist pack and the backs pressed home any advantage gained up front by cutting the Marist outside defence into shreds. First five-eighth Cass Walding directedhis backline well on Saturday, while also shining with some big defence, crisp passing and fine positional kicking.
"He directed the game really well for us today, The combination between him and Rhyan Caine is a pretty important one for us ... and today Cass made some huge tackles as well," Hikurangi captain Tim Dow said. With Walding mixing up the plays, the Marist defence was found wanting, particularly out wide and the speed and skill of Hikurangi's outside backs paid dividends - leading to all three of the first half tries. Marist started full of enthusiasm and opened the scoring thanks to an intercept try by Jack Walker. A blast of speed from centre Maurice Cooper saw him break the Marist line and it took three defenders to put him down. As he went to ground he unleashed a miraculous offload to find a flying Dow, who cruised over the line untouched. A few minutes later Troy Kingi ended a rolling maul by dotting down but the move was started once again by a backline break, with Dow - stepping in for the absent Henry Foy at second five-eighth - gaining big metres up the middle capitalising from a Walding inside pass. Walker replied with a penalty and Marist coach Donny Stevenson would have been pretty happy to go to the break 8-13 down but a touch of class saw Marist concede another try. Reece Lavavasour scored virtually untouched after fielding a kick on his 10m line.
In the second spell Marist tightened up their backline defence and the game became a war of attrition. Marist were too often pinned in their own half by the accurate boot of Walding and tried to spin the ball from deep but made too many handling errors to ever threaten a comeback. The only scoring was a Dow penalty before Walding scored the bonus point try to underscore Hikurangi's dominance, running support for Matt Strawbridge's break from the base of a ruckwith time almost up on the clock.
