Canterbury have stormed back in the second half to claim the NPC rugby title, defeating the Northland Taniwha 43-24.<\/p>\n
Trailing 21-10 at halftime, the defending champions turned the match around with five second-half tries to secure a convincing victory.<\/p>\n
The win marks Canterbury’s 16th NPC crown, with the red and blacks going back-to-back as champions.<\/p>\n
“Yeah we had to dig deep there and I thought our bench was exceptional today to close out that game,” Canterbury captain Brodie McAlister said after the match.<\/p>\n
“The boys love coming back to play for their region, it’s a proud region Canterbury.<\/p>\n
“It’s a good group and we’re going to enjoy this one.”<\/p>\n
The Taniwha started strong, but were unable to maintain their momentum in the second spell. Despite their first-ever final ending in disappointment, their historic run will still be remembered as the province’s finest season.<\/p>\n
Taniwha captain Rivez Reihana remarked that Canterbury’s marked increase in intensity after the break came as little surprise.<\/p>\n
“We wanted to win the second half, especially the first five minutes,” Reihana told SkySport.<\/p>\n
“I think there was stuff we could fix all across the board, I’m not going to put it down to one thing.<\/p>\n
“Canterbury just showed why they’re the top team and have been for so long.”<\/p>\n
Far from defeated, Reihana said his players had gained confidence and plenty of belief after a breakout season that saw Northland hold the Ranfurly Shield for five weeks.<\/p>\n
“It’s just the beginning for this group, and we’ll be back, trust me.”<\/p>\n
The game was played in front of a sold-out crowd at Te Kaha Stadium in Christchurch.<\/p>\n
See how the action unfolded in the blog below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canterbury have stormed back in the second half to claim the NPC rugby title, defeating the Northland Taniwha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-641507","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\/641507","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=641507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}