{"id":206500,"date":"2025-10-11T23:19:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/206500\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T23:19:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T23:19:08","slug":"otago-first-five-reflects-on-semi-final-clinching-penalty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/206500\/","title":{"rendered":"Otago first-five reflects on semi-final clinching penalty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Otago<\/a> might have locked away the Ranfurly Shield for the rest of 2025, but their not done yet, reaching the semi-finals of the Bunnings NPC<\/a> competition after a clutch 82nd minute penalty from Cameron Millar.<\/p>\n

It looked like the Friday night quarter final might have been heading towards extra time, after Otago had a player in the bin and Waikato<\/a> were given a chance to win the game with a couple of minutes left.<\/p>\n

But referee Ben O\u2019Keefe awarded Otago a penalty from close to 40 meters out, which Millar straight away pointed to the posts for a shot at goal.<\/p>\n

Millar, who looked confident from the moment he signalled to the posts, slotted the penalty to send Otago into this year\u2019s semi-finals.<\/p>\n

Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin will host one of the semi-finals, but Otago won\u2019t know their opponent until later on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Jason Pine on\u00a0Newstalk ZB\u2019s Weekend Sport, Millar explained that his kick started to fade to the right as it closed in on the posts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think every kicker wants to take that opportunity. We make some, and miss some but always keen to have a crack,\u201d Millar said on\u00a0Newstalk ZB.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started off looking pretty good down the middle, and then started fading right a bit late, which made me a wee bit nervous. But lucky enough, it snuck over in the end, which was good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Highlanders<\/a> first-five described the feeling as \u2018pure euphoria\u2019, getting his team over the line in such a big game.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that was just pure euphoria, I\u2019m not even really sure what I was doing after I got it over, but yeah, obviously pretty stoked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a few messages on the phone, don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve even got to them all yet, but yeah it\u2019s been pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a very impressive season to date for Otago, something which Millar attributes to the coaching staff\u2019s effort in creating a great environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think our new coach, Mark Brown, he\u2019s just created an environment where everyone can be themselves, and I think it\u2019s just a combination of everyone\u2019s strengths coming together,\u00a0we\u2019ve just bonded really well, and have been able to put together some really good footy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we played Wellington<\/a> in one of the early rounds, and it was a really tight affair, but we managed to scrape a win.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think from that game onwards, we\u2019ve just been able to build momentum and belief, and it\u2019s just keeps stacking games that we\u2019ve got ourselves to this point from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Otago might have locked away the Ranfurly Shield for the rest of 2025, but their not done yet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-206500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}