Kaikorai proved if you can just hang in there long enough, there is a gap at the end of the ruck.<\/p>\n
The defending champions got their title defence off to a positive start with a 20-17 win against Southern at Bathgate Park.<\/p>\n
The home team dominated most of the match.<\/p>\n
They led 17-3 with about 20 minutes left.<\/p>\n
But they run out of gas. Suddenly, they would have had just as much chance of getting to a ruck if it was in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
Kaikorai ran in two late tries to level the score, and seasoned first five Ben Miller knocked over a penalty to give them the lead with just a few minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
Southern had a late opportunity and looked to convert their complete and utter scrum dominance into a push-over try.<\/p>\n
But veteran No 8 Mika Mafi grou nded the ball just short. They had a second dip at the line from another scrum, but this time they moved it to the midfield and were just inches short again.<\/p>\n
In the other games, Green Island edged Harbour 17-7 at Miller Park, University dispatched Dunedin 52-31 in the Jonathan Keogh Memorial at Kettle Park and Taieri pulled away to beat Alhambra-Union 28-15 at the North Ground.<\/p>\n
FULLTIME SCORES<\/p>\n
Dunedin 31-52\u00a0University\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alhambra-Union 15-28\u00a0Taieri\u00a0<\/p>\n
Southern\u00a017-20\u00a0Kaikorai<\/p>\n
Green Island\u00a017-7\u00a0Harbour\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kaikorai proved if you can just hang in there long enough, there is a gap at the end…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352247,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-352246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}