Top Performance

Ohakea Rugby 2007 Club Season

CPL Deane Wilson, Captain

This is the first year Ohakea has had a rugby team in the local competition since the 80’s. We were playing under the Te Kawau umbrella and as such were called Te Kawau – Ohakea in the local competition. Strong interest on Base resulted in our numbers growing to about 30 players, despite the loss of a few players to Timor. A great deal of thanks must go to SGT Scotty Hunter for encouraging Base support, coupled with his role as coach and motivator.

Being new to the competition we had to go through grading rounds before we could proceed. We started with a few good wins, piling on some big scores and having no tries scored against us for the whole of the first round. Whenever possible we tried to throw the ball about a bit, get everyone involved and enjoying their rugby.

Round two of grading saw us up against the top teams from the other third grade pools. The competitive level noticeably increased however we scored some hard fought wins during this round. The team was starting to play as a unit; Scotty had us thinking about what we were doing, while individuals were stepping up to match our opponents. We had one draw in this round against Dannevirke playing them at Dannevirke but went through the rest of the round unbeaten.

As it finished up we were well clear at the top of the table, which earned us the Lion Red Cup – the first time a Te Kawau based side had ever won it!

We then learned the bad news. The other Te Kawau team in this round (who we had twice beaten) had finished in second spot, also each club can have only one team in each grade. Unfortunately for us it was decided that the club would benefit more from the other Te Kawau team being promoted to the second grade.

Through the next round of games we were once again in dominating form. However, we then lost a few more players to Timor for the second rotation including our coach. This immediately before our game against Bulls, who had been relegated from the higher grade. Huge support at the ground for both sides saw Bulls just came out on top of a tough match by two points. Overall though we finished top in this competition and progressed into the semi-finals. Our semi turned out to be a very hard fought game against Oroua, which went to extra time before we managed to come out on top.

The final was a big day for us. We were up against Bulls again, the only team to have beaten us all year. The game was played at FMC Stadium in Palmerston North, home of the Manawatu Turbos, while both teams had a fantastic turn out of crowd support. The game was again a hard fought affair, with us having the wind advantage in the first half and being ahead 9-8 at the break. The scores remained the same until less than 10 minutes to run when a try followed closely by a penalty gave Bulls a 16-9 lead. Some hard Ohakea forward drives and slick back-line moves then saw us score an unconverted try with 3 minutes to play; 16-14. Although we pressed strongly the referee blew full-time following a Bulls knock-on; once again we went down to Bulls by two points.

14 competition games, won 11, drew 1, lost 2, points for 379, points against 157.

Overall the Ohakea Club had a successful and satisfying season, which bodes especially well for the 2007 Interbase tournament and the 2008 rugby season.