Heroes. All of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You could strap a tank to Christian Lio-Willie\u2019s back and he would carry it over the try line with him.<\/p>\n
Sam Gilbert was steel under the high ball.<\/p>\n
Dylan Pledger was lightning.<\/p>\n
Lucas Casey was even quicker and tackled everything that moved.<\/p>\n
Jona Nareki \u00a0ignited fire after fire.<\/p>\n
Cameron Millar ditched the drums and took centre stage.<\/p>\n
Big ups to the tight five who seldom get any love.<\/p>\n
Finn Hurley is back.<\/p>\n
Oh, and Mark Brown for Mayor.<\/p>\n
Did we mention Otago is through to the NPC final for the first time in 20 years?<\/p>\n
Should have led with that.<\/p>\n
They rolled Bay of Plenty 41-17 with a simply stunning performance tonight.<\/p>\n
The 10,764 fans under the roof at Forsyth Barr Stadium were treated to rugby played at breakneck pace.<\/p>\n
And here is a good omen for you. The last time they won seven NPC matches in a row was in 1998 \u2014 the year they last won the title.<\/p>\n
Canterbury and Hawke\u2019s Bay will jostle for the other spot in the final in Christchurch tomorrow.<\/p>\n
Good luck to them. They will need it to beat a red-hot Otago side.<\/p>\n
The stunning was not immediately obvious.<\/p>\n
Otago coughed up a couple of penalties and the Steamers took advantage.<\/p>\n
They shifted the ball left and Otago ran out of numbers. Openside flanker Veveni Lasaqa slipped over in the corner.<\/p>\n
Otago responded promptly. Nareki barrelled over out wide. Jae Broomfield had made a couple of nice darts in the lead-up.<\/p>\n
But the Bay produced some magic to retake the lead.<\/p>\n
Lucas Cashmore found winger Fehi Fineanganofo with a pinpoint cross-field kick. He set off down the left wing, cut back in and got the ball to Cole Forbes for the finish.<\/p>\n
Brilliant.<\/p>\n
And so was the response in this topsy-turvy opening 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
Otago flanker Casey popped up out wide, got a tremendous offload to Broomfield and he found Josh Whaanga on the inside.<\/p>\n
The defence scrambled, but a few carries later, Lio-Willie rumbled over.<\/p>\n
Whaanga almost nabbed another five-pointer moments later when Will Tucker charged down a kick from Kele Lasaqa, and the ball broke nicely for Whaanga.<\/p>\n
The game was being played at a tremendous pace and somehow both sides found another gear.<\/p>\n
Neither defence could get set before another wave of attackers charged forward.<\/p>\n
Exhibit A. The Steamers made a wonderful clearance but Pledger took a quick throw-in and Nareki punted a 50-22.<\/p>\n
Otago swung back on to attack. They were repelled initially, but Lio-Willie smashed the ball up several times before Will Stodart reached out and thumped the ball down over the chalk.<\/p>\n
Breathless action.<\/p>\n
There might have been just a couple of minutes left in the half, but it felt like hours of action in the gap between Stodart\u2019s try and Millar sending the ball into touch to bring up halftime.<\/p>\n
Otago led 21-12.<\/p>\n
Millar pounced early in the second spell. He swerved into a gap and got the ball to the ever-present Pledger, who dotted down under the posts.<\/p>\n
Otago has scored either side of the break to seize control of the game.<\/p>\n
The Bay had to score next. They did not.<\/p>\n
Millar slotted a penalty.<\/p>\n
Finn Hurley, who has returned from a long injury layoff looking like it was only yesterday that he last laced up the boots, scored from a mistake for the Steamers. He hit the pass from Broomfield at top speed and with no fear.<\/p>\n
Ngarohi McGarvey-Black nabbed a consolation try for Bay of Plenty, but his side was overwhelmed by an utterly brilliant performance from Otago in the second half.<\/p>\n
The scores<\/p>\n
Otago 41 (Jona Nareki, Christian Lio-Willie, Will Stodart, Dylan Pledger, Finn Hurley tries; Cameron Millar 5 con, pen, Sam Gilbert pen),\u00a0Bay of Plenty 17 (Veveni Lasaqa, Cole Forbes, Ngarohi McGarvey-Black tries; Lucas Cashmore con).\u00a0Halftime: 21-12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heroes. All of them.\u00a0 You could strap a tank to Christian Lio-Willie\u2019s back and he would carry it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-84062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84062","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=84062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}