A rare victory driven by pride and passion has lifted the Border senior B rugby team from the doldrums and earned them the Stihl Shop Wanganui Shield.
Until Saturday's 25-24 win over Marist Celtic in the Wanganui club rugby senior division, Border had scored just 54 points during round oneand had a massive 400 scored against them.
That all changed at Dallison Park, the Border home ground in Waverley, when the forwards delivered ball to a backline finally ready to use it.
Border senior coach Chris Carrick said the arrival of young Tim Lennox at centre set the backs alight and combined with quality ball from the forwards the home side pushed out to a 14-0 lead in the first 15 minutes.
"We just took off early in the game and kept attacking," Carrick said.
"We've been sitting on the end of some huge hidings this season and I think Celtic came up thinking they'd beat us by a 100, but our boys really lifted their game at the weekend. Our backline has had ball to work with in other games but simply haven't got their act together. The arrival of Tim Lennox changed all that and he marshalled them very well.
"He was helped out big time too by our young first-five, Tyrone Albert, who made some really good breaks. When he's not playing for the Cullinane College 1st XV Tyrone comes and plays for us. Easily the pick of the forwards for us was Dion (Big D) Soutar who had a phenomenal tackle count. He simply didn't let Celtic pass the advantage line - he just kept knocking them down and was named man of the match," Carrick said.
Celtic coach Jerome McCrea made no bones about the outcome: "We were simply beaten by a better team on the day. I told them afterwards that they had taught us a lot about pride and passion for the club. They just gave it to us all game," McCrea said.
Lifting the Stihl Shop Wanganui Challenge Shield was a huge coup for Border. Until two weeks ago competition leaders Hunterville had held it for the past six years before Celtic wrestled it off them two weeks back.
"We thought it was a huge thing taking it off Hunterville, but we only held it two weeks - that's rugby," McCrea said.
Border president Kevin Murphy said the win and the trophy was a massive lift for the young senior B side and hopefully a pointer to better things to come when round two kicks off this weekend.
