Harbour produce major turnaround to down Mako

By Peter Jones [Marlborough App]

North Harbour reversed a heavy defeat earlier in the season, at the same venue, beating the Tasman Mako women’s side 31-20 in their Farah Palmer Cup quarterfinal showdown at Lansdowne Park today.

Earlier this month Tasman beat Harbour 42-15 in round robin play but it was a different story today with a place in the semis on the line.

There were early warning signs from the visitors, the Hibiscus doing their best to speed the game up and almost totally dominating at scrum time.

After an early Hayley Hutana penalty shot rebounded off the posts Harbour notched the first try, lock Jade Wong plunging over, Hutana’s attempted conversion again striking the woodwork.

Tasman slowly worked their way back into the game, gaining good field position, but were unable to establish scrum parity, conceding penalties which allowed the visitors to clear their red zone.

With the Hibiscus defence well organised and committed it took until the 24th minute before the home side crossed the line, a lengthy series of attacks ending with winger Becky Davidson crossing in the left corner Cassie Siataga landed the wide-angled conversion to edge the home side ahead.

But it was Harbour who had the final say before the break, the classy Hutana slicing through to score under the posts, converting her own try then adding a penalty on the stroke of halftime to push her side to a 15-7 advantage at oranges.

Tasman came out stronger from the sheds and within five minutes had a converted try to show for their renewed vigour. It was scored by lock Brooklyn Logan and converted by Siataga to quickly reduce the deficit to one point.

Hutana landed an angled penalty to extend Harbour’s lead before Siataga replied in kind to narrow the gap once more as a steady stream of penalties flowed from the referee’s whistle which, coupled with multiple water breaks turned the match into a stop-start encounter.

Repeated infringements by the home side at the breakdown proved costly soon after when replacement prop Marama Elkington was binned and Hutana landed the resulting penalty.

She added another with 10 minutes to play, once again the home side’s inability to handle Harbour’s relentless scrum pressure costing them dearly.

With five to go Siataga landed another penalty to close the score to 24-20 but Harbour were not to be denied, replacement Chantelle Schofield crashing over to send the Hibiscus to the semi-finals. Hutana iced the conversion to rub salt into the wound.

North Harbour 31 (Jade Wong, Chantelle Schofield, Hayley Hutana tries, Hutana 2 con, 4 pens) defeated Tasman 20 (Becky Davidson, Brooklyn Logan tries, Cassie Siataga 2 con, 2 pen). HT: 15-7 Harbour.