TUKAPA BEATS HAWERA

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1934, Page 4

TUKAPA BEATS HAWERA

FORWARDS’ GAME IN RAIN. EXCITING FINISH OF MATCH. On a drenched ground and for part of the time in drizzling rain, Tukapa ] beat Hawera by three points to nil in a dour battle of forwards at the Hawera showgrounds on Saturday. . The match had its spectacular climax in a flash or , inspired Rugby during the last few , minutes of play. The Hawera team made a desperate effort to turn almost certain defeat into victory or a draw and played like men possessed. From an inter- < minable series of scrums and line-outs , that had characterised so much of the i match, the sodden ball suddenly flashed ; ; into the open. The passing of the red and yellow backs division was bewild- ; ering in speed and polish. The Tukapa defenders met the rush with hard tackling but were left standing. A Hawera 1 three-quarters, indistinguishable in the • melee, took the ball cleanly after half-a-dozen men had handled in as many seconds, hurdled the man marking him, handed off another, and seemed over m . the comer when a magnificent tackle , brought him down five yards from the line. The home forwards were on the ball as suddenly as they" had let it out. ; Brown, always prominent in rushes by the Hawera pack, picked up from the toes of a Tukapa forward, ran, lost the greasy leather in the touch-line itself, dived and missed by inches. Boswell forced for Tukapa like a flash. So near was that one brilliant movement to scoring that a section of the crowded stand yelled wild disapproval, when the referee signalled no try. It was a stirring finish •

I to an otherwise dull though hard-fought match. If a sodden, slippery ball robbed Hawera of at least a try on time, the same might be said of many a promising movement started by Tukapa men earlier in' the afternoon. The Tukapa backs were better than their opponents on the day, but no enterprise could possibly make it a backs’ game.' When the ball did get into the open the crowd got to its feet, but the ball ' could not be kept in the open for long. For a long while after the opening line-outs in the Tukapa twenty-five occurred in monotonous sequence. An early series of infringements of the offside rule nearly proved expensive for the visitors. Now and then, notably towards the end of the first session, the ball was got cleanly away from the scrum and some remarkably well-judg-ed kicking by both Papps, the Tukapa full-back, and Nowell and Dymond for Hawera, gave a flavour of really good quality football. Under the conditions Papps’ game was uncannily accurate. Not once did he miss or fumble a ball that really, counted. After the change Tukapa came away with a snappy rush which caught the'Hawera men off guard and out of position and, as it turned out, won the match. The Tukapa forwards dribbled through the loose and O’Dowda scored with a neat, quick dive half-way out to the comer. The try was uncon-? verted and from then on to the end. the standard of football dropped appreciably. The first half had been an exposition of forward play, the last half merely forward play unqualified, except on rare occasions when backs had a chance to show undoubted quality. Under normal conditions it would have been, a stirring match from start to finish. If the Hawera backs can get a shade more polish into their work at close quarters, a Hawera-Tukapa match will be anybody’s game in any weather.'