The victory also means Napier claim the historic Polson Banner, contested annually with Palmerston North Boys\u2019.<\/p>\n
The Napier players are swamped by their fellow schoolmates after winning the Polson Banner. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n
Napier coach Willie Tran said a lot of work had gone into getting to this stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe brought in a few changes and reset our culture [last year], and this year you are starting to see the fruits of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a really good brotherhood here at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tran said Palmerston North were always tough.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was no way they were going to give up that banner easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were pretty tough and pretty gritty.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said their attention now turned to Hamilton.<\/p>\n
\u201cHamilton have been the in-form team all season, and they are a good team with some good coaches, but they are definitely beatable.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as we stick to our plan and can limit our mistakes, we will be all right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Napier Boys\u2019 last won the Super 8 competition in 2003.<\/p>\n
Rotorua Boys\u2019 High School can still tie with Napier on points on the Super 8 table, but Napier progress in that situation, given they won the head-to-head.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Napier Boys\u2019 lost beloved guidance counsellor Rob Silver to cancer, something that came as a shock to the school community. Tran paid tribute to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor a lot of our current boys today, who play, [Silver] did a lot of work with them during another tragic loss of one of our students last year, Kaea Karauria, and he was amazing in terms of support he offered the players and school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Hastings Boys\u2019 play their last Super 8 match of the season on Saturday, at home against Hamilton Boys\u2019.<\/p>\n
Napier Boys\u2019 High School 19 (Davis Hancy, Harry Jones, Rick Withers tries; Will Lovatt 2 con) defeated Palmerston North Boys\u2019 High School 13 (Ollie Read, Taj Hauraki tries; Manaia Rudolph pen) HT: 14-8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The victory also means Napier claim the historic Polson Banner, contested annually with Palmerston North Boys\u2019. The Napier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1848,4596,5904,1888,305,2959,3607,111,139,69,1118,19328,20488,6327,4062,18429,213,313,27982],"class_list":["post-550244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-boys","tag-competition","tag-final","tag-first","tag-have","tag-high","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-reach","tag-reached","tag-rugby","tag-school","tag-schoolboy","tag-sports","tag-super","tag-xv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550244","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=550244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}