One player who knows how to keep his focus at speed and still execute when the moment comes is centre Alekesio Vakarorogo, who scored a hat-trick of tries to take his tally to 44 in 47 games. He could easily have had a fourth rampaging wide in the second half, but selflessly gave the pass to his Border club-mate Harry Symes to get his second try of the match.
Second-five Ethan Robinson made plenty of line-breaks of his own while, once they moved past early errors, first-five Te Atawhai Mason and fullback Adam Boult found their groove and got a try each, with Boult slotting seven conversions for a 19-point haul.
Without both leading locks, Whanganui skipper Doug Horrocks took on the bulk of the catches at the back of the lineout, which didn’t work perfectly, but there wasn’t much risk as their opponents made plenty of errors themselves, including overthrown or dropped passes on the fringes.
Best for the locals was first-five Carlos Kemp with ball in hand and off the boot, along with East Coast legend Hone Haerewa at No8, home from North Harbour again this season and scoring in his 60th match.
Whanganui also used the occasion for a little experimentation, as reserve prop Jonty Bird entered the fray very early in the 29th minute, on top of young halfback Rehimana Meihana getting to start.
It was good to welcome back promising forwards Ekenasio Fiso and Joeli Tora, the former scoring a good try while the latter did some solid cleanup work around the breakdown.
The “Mob Squad” did their part with reserve midfielder Shaun O’Leary and reserve forward Joseph Abernethy scoring late tries.
It was not Whanganui’s biggest score in Ruatoria, that was 74-8 by the 2016 “Heartland Invincibles”, although that was a very settled team, whereas everything this season is all fresh for a squad with 10 debutants, which Horrocks acknowledged post-match.
“Always good to get up the Coast, it’s a different side of the country and it’s an experience for the boys that haven’t come up this way before.
“It was just good to see the boys throw the ball wide and have a bit of a crack.
“First 10 minutes, the skills were a bit sketchy, which has probably been the focus for us the last few weeks, so pleasing to see us turn that around.”
Hamlin would have also liked to see a little more structural security, although it’s understandable when a player beats two tacklers he can get isolated because he runs off backing himself to beat the rest.
“I thought we were just a little frantic if I’m being honest, we could have been a little bit more composed, found our depth, just the things we’ve been working on.
“We got the gain-line too easily in some cases and, in the end, that was okay.
“It was a bit helter-skelter, but we were just trying to make sure we were a bit more clinical and while we did some stuff we wanted to - 64 points is a nice margin - but we should have been cleaner in our execution and a bit more ruthless on our defence.”
The player hitting all his marks was Vakarorogo, beating multiple tacklers for runaway tries.
“He just keeps on proving, week in and week out, how effective and good he can be.”
Other results, September 13
Air Chathams Whanganui Under 18 Boys lost to Wairarapa Bush U18s 37-29.
AGC Training Whanganui Under 16 Boys lost to Wairarapa Bush U16s 69-7.
