With the club season wrapped up, Ranga players are now representing Auckland across various competitions. Have a read below to see how they are going.

Under 18 Girls

Two of Pakuranga’s junior players who developed through club pathways into our Belles programme in 2023 donned the blue and white hoops on Saturday. Kiritea Te reo and Eden Mika were named in the Auckland South/East U18s that assembled last Tuesday. The girls took a trip over the bridge to face a spirited North Harbour team that had been together for nearly a month.

Harbour came out hot, with great structure and stretched Auckland, showing the intent to get the ball wide quickly. The quick play had Harbour take the lead 5-0 10 minutes in.

From there the game settled down, with Eden being disruptive at line out time, and a defensive wall, always finding herself in the right place at the right time as a number seven always does.

The Auckland girls weathered the storm and two quick tries had them on top 10-5 into the second half, with Harbour scoring a converted try to go up 12-10 with 10 to go.

Fresh off an Auckland Thunder campaign, Kiritea came off the bench to provide the much needed calmness that got Auckland back into the right zone off some handy touch finders, where Eden secured the ball at lineout time.

Eden took on the captain duties for the last 20 minutes, winding down the clock, taking the game to set piece where possible with a dominant scrum, and Kiritea using her forwards and backline to keep ball in hand.

A sneaky tap and go 5m out to Howick College student Marica, had her bag a double and put Auckland in front 15-12 with 6 minutes to go.

Auckland South/East now head to Waitemata on Saturday to host Northland at 2:45pm, where a win will likely book them a spot in the Northern Regions Final.

Auckland Development Men

The team travelled to Karaka to take on Counties Manukau who dusted them up in a preseason fixture four weeks ago.

Determined to make amends for this, in particular the lesson Counties gave them at the breakdown, Auckland started well with some dominant carries and strong removal of bodies by the forward pack.

The Auckland kickers were not quite on point and this allowed Counties to counter attack well, and a couple of missed tackles from the ensuing kick-chases, Counties were in behind the Auckland defence. This let the very big forward pack of Counties onto the front foot and get a roll on with a strong pick and go attack leading to their first try.

Auckland’s set piece, scrum in particular came under big pressure and the resulting penalty had them pinned into the corner where Counties scored another try around the front of their strong maul when their hooker sniffed out an opportunity on the short side.

More scrum pressure led to two penalties being kicked making the score 20 – 0 in Counties favour.

Forwards coach, Grant Henson had seen enough and subbed Pakuranga Tighthead prop Sam Chricton into the game at the 32 minute mark of the first half. Straight away the scrum improved, and from an attacking one, the Auckland Halfback spotted a gap and got over to make the score 20 -7 with the conversion being nailed. A valuable shot just before halftime.

The second half was all one way traffic with the set piece penalties coming the other way, a dominant breakdown, and some nice touches from the backs for Auckland to score 7 second half tries to Counties one, making the final score 52 – 7 in Auckland’s favour.

Sione Takai from The Ranga played 80 minutes at six and had another massive performance on both sides of the ball, creating 2 turn-overs on defence, and giving constant go forward with his work on attack. One carry putting his Pakuranga team mate, Sam Chricton over for a try with a superb offload through contact. Pakuranga Captain Pasqualle Dunne also had a massive 80 minute game in the midfield where he tackled like the Defensive Beast he is, and also provided some much needed glue on Attack and leadership across the board in this young team.

This weekend  the B’s take on North Harbour at Orakei Domain at 245pm on Saturday.

Auckland U19s

The other Ranga rep in action was Antonio Popoali'i who is part of the Auckland Under 19 squad. He was named on the bench in their match against Waikato and played 20 minutes in the 36-5 victory.

Article added: Wednesday 06 September 2023