Classic game of two halves

UNBELIEVABLE: Wairarapa-Bush flanker James Goodger celebrates as teammate Cameron Hayton dots down for a try. PHOTO/CHRIS KILFORD

Wairarapa-Bush are through to the semifinals of the premier section, the Meads Cup, in the 2015 Heartland rugby championship and how they did it virtually defies belief.

Their chances of making the all-important top four seemed gone for all money when they trailed a rampant Wanganui by a staggering 47-0 at half-time in the last of their preliminary round matches played at Memorial Park, Masterton, on Saturday.

With backs and forwards often combining in attacking movements that swept half the length of the field and more, Wanganui ran in seven unanswered tries and the main thrust of conversation during the break was whether they could continue to keep the scoreboard ticking at more than a point a minute.

On the evidence of what had been seen through that first 40 minutes it would have taken a brave punter to bet against them doing exactly that, especially when the woefulness of the home team's defence was taken into account. The number of tackles they had missed would probably have been even higher than the number of points Wanganui had scored.

This though was to become one of those matches clearly befitting the old cliche, a game of two halves. From the time midfield back Andy Humberstone scored a try to break his team's "duck" in the second minute Wairarapa-Bush exerted much the same dominance in the second half as Wanganui had in the first.

Remarkably they scored five tries without reply, all of them converted by Priest, to reduce Wanganui's lead to 47-35.

And with still 15 minutes on the clock the prospects of Wairarapa-Bush pulling off what would have been one of the great comebacks in Heartland championship history - if not the greatest - could at least be entertained.

However, it was not to be, with Wanganui finally getting their hands on the ball and forcing an infringement from which a penalty was kicked, following up soon after with a converted try to seal a 57-35 victory.

Having earned one bonus point for scoring four or more tries, Wairarapa-Bush's Meads Cup semi-final aspirations then depended on the results of two other matches, which went the way they needed - Buller upsetting Horowhenua-Kapiti 44-31 and Mid-Canterbury edging out North Otago 39-36. Horowhenua-Kapiti did manage a try-scoring bonus point to stay level with Wairarapa-Bush on 23pts but with Wairarapa-Bush having beaten them a fortnight earlier, and also having the better points differential for good measure, the countback for fourth went their way.

The format for the Meads Cup semifinals is that the top qualifiers are at home to the fourth qualifier and the second qualifier hosts the third.

This means South Canterbury (35pts) will meet Wairarapa-Bush (23pts) in Timaru next Saturday while Mid-Canterbury (34pts) will play Wanganui (33pts) at Ashburton.

South Canterbury, which thumped Poverty Bay 62-19 in the last of their preliminary round games, will no doubt start warm favourites against Wairarapa-Bush, but the latter can take heart from their pool game in Masterton a few weeks back when they were competitive in a match won by South Canterbury by just 9pts.

Whatever the result of next weekend's match, Wairarapa-Bush can already look back on a season where they have made significant improvements from 12 months ago when they only had the one team, East Coast, behind them on the points table and failed to make the semi-finals for even the second tier Lochore Cup competition.