Whanganui club rugby: Bye for Metro side as season nears business end

Metro has a 10-match winning streak. Photo / NZME

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St Johns Whanganui Metro will go into their bye week very interested to watch the fight to avoid fourth place in the MRU Colts division, as their season nears the business end.

Neither table leaders Metro, on a 10-match winning streak, nor defending champions the Feilding Yellows, second with their bye coming up, can be dislodged from their table spots.

Meanwhile, the other five teams still have a mathematical chance of making the semifinals with two games each remaining.

While some might have to settle for fourth, which means facing Metro in Whanganui, the others would rather take their chances with the Yellows, as evidenced by the big effort third-placed Old Boys Marist put in with their 42-11 loss to Metro at Ongley Park on Saturday.

"Marist aren't keen on meeting us [in a semifinal], they want to finish third," said Metro coach Mark Cosford.

"It was a lot stronger Old Boys Marist than we played in the first one.

"They had really good defence, took us a while to get on top of them."

Metro had hammered Old Boys 65-19 back on May 8, but only led 17-6 at halftime and had to withstand the home side's pressure, in overcast but dry conditions in Palmerston North.

"They attacked our line for a good 5-8 minutes," said Cosford.

"Getting held up on the line, so it was good to see a bit of passion."

Metro then did what Metro does – as the turnover saw their speedsters counterattack from their own line and go the distance to score.

Old Boys' heads went down and they would not recover.

"After that happened, we started breaking out," said Cosford.

Midfielder Jack O'Leary is now out-stripping Tasman Tanning Premier's phenom Vereniki Tikoisolomone, as yet another double took him to 20 tries this campaign.

First-five Joey Devine also scored a double, lifting his tally to 14.

Player of the day went to No8 Lewis Young.

Having this Saturday off, Metro are just running regular Tuesday-Thursday training sessions before their final round-robin match against Freyberg Old Boys (3-2-5), who won a crucial game with Dannevirke SC 22-13 to tie fourth placed Feilding Old Boys-Oroua (4-0-6) on the table.