The sun was shining as the team began their festival on Monday. It felt like a beautiful summer’s day and the boys were excited. It was the first tournament for a lot of the team and they gained much from the experience. The opposition included Macleans, Rosehill, Orewa, Aorere and Tangaroa Colleges. We started slowly on Monday going down to Orewa, many of the boys weren’t used to playing at 9am on Monday and it took a while to get into our stride.
The second match of the day was against Aorere and the boys performed with valour against a much larger opposition. Tradyn Rameka, Vettori Foster and Tristan Tualangi had outstanding performances on both attack and defence. The third game of the day was against Rosehill and the boys narrowly went down in what was a fiercely contested battle. Vessisio Tangifua made some damaging runs with some deft touches from Anthony Nelson. Joshua McCarthy organised well from the back and our little general Glenn Fromont marched the boys around the field.
There were a few sore bodies on Wednesday but the boys took the game to Macleans from the outset. Conditioning would prove the difference at the end with Macleans taking the game late in the piece. There was some heavy hitting from our front row of Daniel Harrington, Roman Blackwell and Eleazor Temara.
Our Year 13 boys led from the front throughout the festival and as they have done through the season.
We wish them all the very best with their future endeavours. We would also like to say a huge thank you to our management (Conal Dempsey, Chris McCarthy, Maurice Nelson) for their tireless effort in putting the boys on the field each week. Thank you to Kieran Gutry, Kim Borthwick, Max Schroder and Raymond Shirtliff for their support of our team in 2019.