Hooker George Bell scored a hat-trick of tries and winger Chay Fihaki bagged a double as Canterbury saw off fast-finishing North Harbour 25-24 in a compelling NPC match in Albany.<\/p>\n
Canterbury’s powerful pack laid the platform for Bell to bag three tries in the second quarter of the match as the visitors took a 15-7 lead into the interval after playing into a blustery wind.<\/p>\n
Fihaki’s double ensured Canterbury kept their nose in front throughout the second half but they had to survive a torrid Harbour finish.<\/p>\n
Yellow cards in the final 10 minutes shown to Canterbury forwards Manumaua Letiu and Tonga Helu left the Cantabrians exposed.<\/p>\n
The home side capitalised on the numerical advantage, with prop Riley Tofilau powering over for his second try.<\/p>\n
Harbour fielded the subsequent kickoff and, with the final hooter sounded, swept steadily downfield against 13 men and threatened to snatch a late win before an error ruined their plans.<\/p>\n
Defending champions Canterbury, who didn’t land any of their five conversion attempts, notched a third straight win to climb to fourth on the standings with two rounds remaining.<\/p>\n
They’re one place ahead of Harbour, who could have gone top of the standings if victorious, such as the compact nature of the top of the table.<\/p>\n
Hawke’s Bay still lead – despite having their last two games – but they, Northland, Otago, Canterbury and North Harbour are separated by just three points.<\/p>\n
Northland rumbled past Wellington 52-28 in the capital, delivering the winless home side their 10th straight defeat spanning back to last season – equalling the province’s worst ever run of losses.<\/p>\n
Last year’s runners-up Otago opened the weekend with an ominous 50-21 win over Counties-Manukau while Auckland needed a late penalty to pip Tasman 24-22.<\/p>\n
Hawke’s Bay’s concerning form continued with a 32-17 loss to Bay of Plenty while Waikato remained in semi-final contentin with a fighting 36-27 home win over Manawatu.<\/p>\n
Follow how the game unfolded below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hooker George Bell scored a hat-trick of tries and winger Chay Fihaki bagged a double as Canterbury saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606486,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-606485","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\/606485","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=606485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}