Wins for Wellington Development and Wellington U20s; close losses for Pride and Wellington College

Above: The Wellington U20s at the start of their match against Wellington Maori on Saturday.

Updated: The Wellington Development side enjoyed the biggest win of the afternoon in today’s representative and College First XV matches involving Wellington teams.

In Feilding, the Wellington Development side cantered to a 71-5 win over Manawatu Maori.

At Porirua Park, the Wellington U20s defeated Wellington Maori 41-18, warming up for a busy stretch of matches against inter-provincial opposition by outscoring the Maori seven tries to three and turning an early deficit into a 34-8 lead early in the second half.

In Dunedin, the Wellington Pride missed out to Otago in the first round of the women’s NPC, going down 17-21 after being behind 10-13 at the break. The Pride scored three tries, to wings Brenda Collinsand? Jessika Akavai and lock Jackie Pate, while a yellow card to openside flanker Kirstin Stewart was a key moment of the match.

In Rotorua, Wellington College fought gallantly before going down 16-28 to hot shots Hamilton Boys’ High School in their National Top Four semi-final and Moascar Cup challenge match.

The halftime score was 13-13, but Hamilton were too slick in the second half and the Waikato school faces St Kent’$ of Auckland in next week’s final.

In the early game at Porirua Park, the Wellington U16 Development team defeated a Norths Invitational side 26-12.

At Waikanae, the Horowhenua Kapiti B team beat the Wellington Maori Colts 64-10 in round two of the RDO Cup competition, involving the Maori Colts and the Heartland Development teams.

The Wellington Samoans Secondary Schools defeated a Horowhenua Kapiti side 38-0.

The Wellington U20s won their match against the Wellington Maori team with a three-try burst just before and just after halftime. Against their bigger opponents the U20s struggled for rhythm early and conceded seven first half penalties at the breakdown alone. But a positive gameplan, spearheaded by five-eighths Aviata Silago and Jackson Garden-Bachop and left wing Tauaosi Tuimavavae and fullback Andrew Wells, paid off.

Playing with the advantage of a gusty wind at their backs, the U20s were leading 17-8 before the game’s most dangerous attacker, Tuimaavae, sliced through four defenders to put them ahead 24-8 at the break.

Straight after halftime, hard working lock Zac Power finished off a long-range movement and a break by Wells, and two minutes later Tuimavavae ran back a clearing kick and scored another 50 metre try which he converted to put the U20s ahead 34-8.

After making numerous changes? -including an all-new front row to replace James O’Reilly (Wellington Lions), Donald Brighouse (NZ U20s) and Eti Sului (NZ Secondary Schools), the U20s then had to defend well throughout the middle stages of the second half as the Maori muscled up and mounted a comeback, scoring twice to close the deficit to 34-18. But a late try finished off by Wells sealed the result.

The Wellington U20s have a busy stretch of games against other provinces coming up, with matches against Tasman (next week) and Auckland and against Manawatu, Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay in the Hurrricanes U20 tournament.

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Scores (hope to update as results come in):

Wellington U20s 41 (Tauaosi Tuimavavae 2, Luke Campbell 2, LA Moemoi, Zac Power, Andrew Wells try) beat Wellington Maori 18 (Andrew Burne, TJ Fermanis, Eden Monu tries; Randall Bishop con) HT: 24-8

Hamilton Boys’ High School 28 (Bryn Gatland, Raukawa Neems, Harrison Levien, Isaac Te Tamaki tries; Gatland 2 pen, 1 con) beat Wellington College 16 (Wesley Goosen try; Dante Matakatea 3 pen, 1 con). HT:13-13.

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