Three grand national fences cleared—Jack

Press, 21 August 1989, Page 23

Three grand national fences cleared—Jack

By

BOB SCHUMACHER

Frank Jack dismisses all talk of the match against Auckland on September 2 as the likely championship decider. “That’s miles away,” he said after Canterbury’s one-point victory against Waikato in the first division rugby championship on Saturday. "It’s like a grand national and we have only got over three hedges,” the Canterbury coach said. “We cleared a big jump today but there’s some big bushes still coming. The North Island trip is next and that is a high hurdle which we will have to take as it comes.” Mr Jack said that Auckland was down the lane. “I’m worrying about Bay of Plenty next Saturday and whether we’ve got enough Houdinis there.”

Mr Jack said that some of the Canterbury forwards felt they had not been able to play the way

they wanted to and that was a tribute to Waikato. “That’s why they’re one of the top teams, that’s why they had won 12 games in a row and that’s why they are going to be bloody hard to beat — there’s not many weaknesses in the

Waikato game.” The Canterbury selec-tor-coach considered that the home team’s scrum, up against a vaunted All Black front row, had improved another notch and he singled out Andy Earl for his grand line-out performance.

• “They deserved to wip, they were superior in the line-outs and were able jo force the scrum put-ins more regularly than we could. They were able to play their game while we were stilted in ours,” the Waikato coach, Glenn Ross, said;

Mr Ross complimented the line-out play of Canterbury and its ability to control the set phases. “That was the breaking point. Perhaps we could have used a few more shorter line-outs and called them sooner but that’s all ifs and buts and we can’t take anything away from Canterbury.