North Harbour Representative Recap - 20 August

North Harbour Mens B lost 21-51 to Auckland on Saturday. Flanker Connor Collett was player of the day doing what he does best, being a nuisance around the field. Diminutive first five Callum Law contributed 17 points, with 2 tries, 3 conversions, Callum showed that size doesn’t matter against the big boys across the bridge. In the last 20 mins, the former NPC player, Jody Allen came on and carried the ball well on a number of occasions to finish with a nice try.  The B’s face Taranaki at Windsor Park this Saturday at 1pm this Saturday.

The reality of tough weekly football came home to the Harbour Hibiscus when they simply ran out of gas last weekend against a very good looking Counties Manukau side. Head Coach Bill Wigglesworth commented "Counties sent a message to the competition today, especially in the second half. They will be a front runner for sure." Wigglesworth goes on to say "I was pleased with our girls though, especially in the first half. We played a very structured game with effective kicking, pinning them back and with a 5-3 deficit with only a couple of minutes of the first half to go, I thought we could do something pretty special." Counties scored on the stroke of half time though to give them a 10-3 lead and in the break, clearly changed their tactics and kept the ball in hand, running very direct. "The second half saw a lot of defense from us. Whilst we were good in patches we started to leak points and the score blew out".

The Hibiscus play Canterbury this week at Windsor Park at 1pm with the U-19 men's team playing after them. "Canterbury will be another good test of where we are at. There is no question this team has heart, and if we can put it together we will be competitive".

The North Harbour Under 19’s traveled north on Friday night to Toll Stadium to take on Northland in the curtain-raiser to a Northland Mitre 10 Cup fixture.  It was the first of the Northern Region seeding games in preparation for the National U-19 tournament in September. Harbour was ahead 10-6 at half-time with a converted try and a penalty and at 15 minutes to go were tied up 15 all but Northland powered away to score two converted tries and seal the win.   The two Harbour tries went to wing Nick Burns and fullback Kyle Browne with lock James Fiebig kicking the conversion and penalty.  The Under 19’s play Auckland B at Windsor Park at 2.30pm this Saturday 27 August.