| Great Games: East Coast 2005 |
| 2004 NPC Game 5: Spriggens Miracle by David Ogilvie Wanganui's midfield back Pati Fetuiai is a man of very few words. No matter, he let his actions speak the loudest on Saturday when after spending most of the week in bed with the flu he scored two tries and produced the last second charge-down of East Coast first five-eighths Roger Chappell's kick which saw replacement Leon Mason fall on the ball for an unlikely Wanganui NPC rugby victory, 29-28. The NPC second division win, with its five points, put Steelform Wanganui on 12 points, in fifth place on a count-back with North Otago. The dream of an unlikely semi-final spot remains alive but would probably require bonus point victories against Thames Valley and Manawatu and a couple of points from this Saturday's Pukekohe match with Counties-Manukau. A few weeks ago probably the only ones who believed this might happen were the players and coaches so all power to them. And if they didn't believe it now, then one thinks they do after Saturday. The comeback from a quite horrid week of preparation 11 players missing on Tuesday with illness etc, little better on Thursday, and not much better for the captain's run on Friday revealed hidden stores of determination and ability in the side. Fetuiai wasn't expected to last the game, but it was his last-second charge on Chappell allied with the long arms of Fili Fili Samuela on one side and Tom Kedrabuka on the other which caused Chappell to mess-up his desperate kick and allow Mason the winning try. And somehow he found the energy to get up in support of the rampaging Scott Donald two minutes before halftime to score the most important try of the game and then repeated it by following left wing John Cleary up the left touch to score after 29 minutes of the second half to get Wanganui within a point at 24-25. "I wasn't feeling well in last week's game against Marlborough and the flu came through after that," Fetuiai said. "Today I wasn't fit but I was determined to try my best." No complaints on that point. No 8 Taulava, tighthead prop Lance Devane and hooker Vaan Rauhina were the other three worst-effected by the flu, and they couldn't produce their usual. They were asked for 10 more minutes of hard graft at halftime and then replaced almost en masse as coach Milton Haig started to empty his bench. It was from this subs' area where the inspiration was found, with Nemai Adrole in particular turning himself into a one-man hit squad both with and without the ball, where his tackling was shattering. He appeared to inspire a previously lack-lustre Tom Kedrabuka, Scott Donald perked up mightily, and Peter Rowe just kept hammering away right from the start. And halfback Josh Edwards started to snipe around the fringes, Fetuiai kept going, and Jerry Meafou came into his own at centre. So Wanganui came back from 7-18 down after 37 minutes, a half in which the players by their own passiveness had allowed East Coast to dictate the terms of play. From that 37th minute Wanganui outscored East Coast 22-10. The most important thing about that first Fetuiai try in the 38th minute was that it allowed a team playing poorly to go into halftime with Haig and assistant Guy Lennox trailing just by four points and knowing the win was possible. If Edwards, Donald and Fetuiai had not managed to fashion that try, Wanganui would not have come back. The problems left for Haig? When the second subs are made, the scrum does become a major problem As does the goalkicking when Paul Bradley is replaced. But hey, it was a win, and a better one than it looked at first glance. |
| Flanker Rowe on East Coast Miracle by David Ogilvie Wanganui's non-stop open side flanker Peter Rowe was annoyed with himself in the early stages of Saturday's topsy-turvy 29-28 NPC second division rugby win over East Coast at Spriggens Park. Wanganui sleepwalked through the first 35 minutes, a clear symptom of the illness many players had suffered through the week. Rowe says he could feel it. "Myself, I was getting to rucks feeling that I wasn't switched on. I was half a metre short, I wasn't doing what I should be doing I wasn't happy with what I was doing," Rowe said. Wanganui turned over the ball 32 times in the match, a huge number symptomatic of getting tied-up with a scrap for the ball on the ground with a physically stronger team. "We were over-committing to the ruck and getting caught short when we swung the ball wide," Rowe said. So Wanganui was very lucky indeed to get to halftime only 18-14 down. Things improved at halftime, said Rowe, on the back of a constructive talking from coach Milton Haig. "That's the thing with Milton, he never comes and fires away. He always comes in and gives you a way to fix what is going wrong. He always tells you what you have to do to fix it and as a player you can't beat that. "You go in at halftime, you know you're playing poorly and he tells you what is needed. That's the way a teams should be coached. I'm really enjoying it." Rowe says the fact that the team kept fighting until it scored the winning try "shows just what this team has got. There's a lot of mental hardness there. With five minutes to go, we were being held and pinged down in our corner and it was hard to see us getting out. But we did." Rowe knew, from the make-up of the team, that he was in for 80 long minutes because his obvious No 7 bench replacement and good mate Andrew Evans had been left out. "That's pretty hard because we're pretty good mates, but even so I don't like coming off. So it was good to get the whole game." Rowe says there were bad moments, "but we targeted five points and we got there in the end. So we'll take them. Haig knew he had problems long before halftime, so he had time to consider his words carefully. He had rated Wanganui's first half effort as being "around 30 percent" of what the team was capable of. "What I said to them was that if they could get out of their walk, the game was theirs' for the taking. Really I was just trying to be constructive the reality was that we had lowered our levels down to East Coast's walk, and we were trying to play the game that they play. "East Coast is a side which (on purpose) drags teams down to that level and it's very hard if you don't keep your wits about you. In all honesty we were very, very lucky to get away with it. And anyone who was watching would have to agree with that," Haig said. "But we played poorly and we got five points. But we were unlucky the first two or three weeks, so we might be getting it back a bit." Now, said Haig, it was a matter of refocusing for a difficult trip to play Counties-Manukau on Saturday, and he said some players had been asked to think hard. "We've had a bad week, a real bad week. It started on Tuesday, carried on Thursday and Friday and even at today's (Saturday's) team meeting, where we had guys who turned up late. "We've just made a commitment to each other because this performance has come on the back of those things that happened during the week. They have to commit themselves to each other each individual, and they know who they are because if they don't want to do that, they can come and tell me, and I will find someone who will take their place. "But if they make that commitment, they're there for good." |