Looking to atone for their loss earlier in the day, Canterbury were on fire early and took a 4-1 lead nearing the midpoint of the first half. In terms of context, Auckland has brought a much improved squad from last year and are extremely competitive while Canterbury are good as always and are desperate to avoid their second loss of the day which would be disasterous for their title hopes.
In what was an ill tempered first half, Ben McCullum and Eli Doornenbal were the main culprits in a punchup which exploded after and seemingly routine penalty decision. This probably illustrated how much this game meant to both teams. In a fair decision, each player was sin-binned, leaving both teams with five players for the two minute period.
Auckland's Daniel Tupua-Silva scored in the corner to make the score 4-2 as the game became increasingly niggly, Shaun Bell scoring soon after and letting his Auckland counterparts know all about the scoreline. Whether that provocation was a good idea or not is up in the air, but Auckland came roaring back quickly though touchdowns to Reihana Soutar-Finch and Wiremu Takarei to close the gap to one. Chanucy Edwardson scored from an overlap right before halftime to give Canterbury at 6-4 lead at the half.
The start of the second half saw a slightly more relaxed atmosphere than the first, maybe this affected the Canterbury defence somehow as they leaked four consecutive touchdowns to go from two up, to two behind. Tupua-Silva completed his hat trick, while Tuimanawa Tawhai and Dawson Clutterbuck scored soft efforts against a team capable of much more. Upon Clutterbuck's touchdown, Canterbury finally clicked back into gear with quickfire efforts to Nick Birchfield and Mita Graham. In this time Auckland had several chances to kill the game off but blew simple chances to put daylight between the two sides. However, this turned out to be irrelevant in retrospect as Takarei and Tawhai put another two point buffer between themselves and Canterbury with little time remaining.
Brendan Stewart scored with the clock down to seconds to give Canterbury faint hope, but a comeback was always unlikely and Soutar-Finch landed the killer blow right before full time to give Auckland a 11-9 win. Canterbury will be disappointed with this result and the future of their tournament hangs in the balance.
Last Modified on 02/03/2012 13:20