The 1stXV had an extremely important match against Feilding High School on Saturday. Even though it is only early days in the CNI competition, a loss would have made it almost impossible for the team to make the semi-finals. For such an important game, we made a lacklustre start conceding an unconverted try after only 5mins. A penalty shortly after to Ferg Burke closed the gap to 5-3. Despite dominating the remainder of the half, silly mistakes and poor decision-making meant we were only able to score one further penalty meaning we had a narrow 6-5 lead at half time. Playing into the wind in the second half the boys knew they would really have to fight hard, and that is exactly what they did. Suddenly we were getting quicker ball, which finally gave our backs a bit of space for the first time in several games. James Mitchell, Matt Caskie, Valynce Crosby-Te Whare and Te Paea Cook-Savage all started to make breaks and looked dangerous every time they touched the ball. It was Ferg Burke who opened the scoring however, who, spotting some lazy drifting defence, took the line on and dotted down under the posts. Ferg added the extras and we were in front for the first time in the game 10-3. Another try almost immediately afterwards to the outstanding George Dyer saw us take a comfortable lead and the result was sealed when Valynce scored with only 10mins left to play. Disappointingly we conceded a rather soft try at the end.
