The Ranfurly Shield is staying put.<\/p>\n
Otago beat neighbour North Otago 46-14 at Forsyth Barr Stadium tonight.<\/p>\n
The game gave off strong pre-season vibes.<\/p>\n
It was messy, loose and sometimes it felt like an away game for Otago.<\/p>\n
A good chunk of the 2138 spectators celebrated loudly when Kelepi Funaki crashed through to score for North Otago in the second half.<\/p>\n
Another big cheer welcomed Ratu Logavatu when he barreled over in the final moment of the match.<\/p>\n
Otago had done enough in the first half to secure the win. They opened the scoring with a pretty slick team try.<\/p>\n
Rique Miln made a perfectly-timed pass to Josh Whaanga, who ran in from 20-odd metres out.<\/p>\n
North Otago quickly put the setback behind them.<\/p>\n
They spent a lengthy period camped in the Otago 22 but could not find a way through.<\/p>\n
But having absorbed a lot of pressure, Otago struck.<\/p>\n
Former North Otago flanker Tony Taufa got over in a melee close to the line.<\/p>\n
He nabbed a second when he got in the boot of a lineout drive from 5m out.<\/p>\n
Otago second-five Jake Te Hiwi got a terrific offload to impressive fullback Charlie Breen to set up another.<\/p>\n
Lock Harry Irving scooped up the ball from a ruck and dived over from close range.<\/p>\n
Otago led 34-0 at the break.<\/p>\n
North Otago needed to have made more of their opportunities and were soon huddled under the posts again.<\/p>\n
Whaanga muscled over out wide.<\/p>\n
But Otago found themselves down a man when prop Ben Lopas got a yellow card for a ruck infringement.<\/p>\n
Riley Lucas was very lucky not to get a card for a tip tackle on Logavatu as well.<\/p>\n
It was a dreary second half and Otago spent a good chunk of it defending.<\/p>\n
Te Hiwi skinned his marker and ran around the outside to score with 10 minutes remaining.<\/p>\n
But the visitors had the final say when Logavatu got across the chalk.<\/p>\n
Mitch Morton had an industrious match for North Otago and fullback Ben Paton had some good moments.<\/p>\n
Te Hiwi and Whaanga were solid in the midfield for Otago and Taufa gave it plenty.<\/p>\n
The scores<\/p>\n
Otago 46 (Tony Taufa 2, Josh Whaanga 2, Harry Irving, Liam Coltman, Riley Lucas, Jake Te Hiwi tries; Rique Miln con, Mackenzie Palmer 2 con.)<\/p>\n
North Otago 14\u00a0(Kelepi Funaki, Ratu Logavatu tries; Ben McCarthy con, Isaac Clunie con.)<\/p>\n
Halftime: 34-0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ranfurly Shield is staying put. Otago beat neighbour North Otago 46-14 at Forsyth Barr Stadium tonight. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-480003","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\/480003","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=480003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}