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Under 17 Rugby Team

Season Report

2010 has been a very successful year for the Hastings Boys’ High School C Grade U17 Team. The year started well with our first dominating win over Lindisfarne College. This provided a bench mark for where we should be setting our goals. The middle of the season saw some close matches especially between Napier which is always a good rivalry. This year our team took the game out but with our lowest score put on another team to date. This proved we had many areas to work on for instance maintaining our structure.
 
The second half of our season continued consistently well. We managed to maintain our high scoring margin as well as hold off any other teams attack with our staunch defense. Keeping our oppositions scores to 10 points or below is definitely a highlight for our season. One of our tougher matches happened to be against our own Under 15 team. The younger athletes came out firing and shocked their elder counterparts with discipline and aggression. Luckily for us, Jade Araia, Ben Smith, and Witere Kupa came to play scoring our tries for the day. This was a good wake up call for our boys heading into the semi finals. Here we faced a well structured Central Hawke’s Bay 2nd XV which we won convincingly 33-3.
 
Our final was against William Colenso High School 1st XV. They were a strong, big team who had only lost to one other team in the season, us. The match was long and displayed moments of a great battle. We took the lead early with a try to Ben Smith but it was not converted. The team managed to hold out the powerful attack from William Colenso who had us camped in our 5m zone for the majority of the game. The calm head from Jade Araia allowed us to clear the ball effectively after each turn over. The score remained the same until Ben Smith slotted a penalty half way during the second half. With the score at 8-0 nerves were very much on end. The last play of the game came down to a brilliant individual try from Jade Araia where a chip over the defensive line provided him with the opportunity to re-gather the ball, fend off two defenders and score under the post. An excellent finish to an excellent season.

A big thank you must go out to Louie Papuni, Gus Jansen, and Craig Drummond for their efforts, time, support, and awesome assistance this year.  Thank you all.

Byron Cracknell
Coach U17 Rugby Team

Season Highlights

The highlights to date are definitely the consistent efforts of Caelym Box. His performance and attitude have enabled him to be recognized by our senior team coaches. Ben Smith has become a natural leader of the team performing positively both on and off the field providing our team with focus and improved structure. Gabe Papuni and Kelly Petrowski both have performed out of their skins this year dominating other forward packs with ease.  Awards for players of the year will be issued in the near future.

POINTS FOR: 595
POINTS AGAINST: 55 

Season Results