New Brighton Rugby Club Annual Report 2013 (Volume 1) | Page 15

Senior Division 2 Played 14 Won 10 Lost 4 Points for 576 Points Against 184 Top Points Scored Top Try Scorer Jamie Rangihuna Dayne Wipou Points -65 No. -9 The pressure was on this season after our last season when we won the Championship and only losing one game. We had a change in coaching personnel, with Scott Pawson coaching the Division 1 side; we welcomed Dave Cattermole to the coaching staff. We were lucky enough to retain the core players from the season before, but unfortunately lost a couple of our key players, some who got injured in preseason and some who ventured overseas on their OE. In saying that we picked up some players from our Colts side and also some new players from outside the club, so we went into the competition confident we could achieve the “double”. We kept to tradition and lost our first game against Christchurch and with it the Challenge Shield. From that game forward we knew that we were the team to beat and teams were really barred up when it came to playing us. We lost our third game to Shirley with a last minute dubious try 10-8 and this seemed to be the turning point for our season. We didn’t lose another game until round 12 losing again to CHCH 28-27. In the previous rounds some of the highlights were beating Marist Albion 72-6, Belfast 65-5, and the big highlight was bringing up the ton against University 116-7, some of the Golden Oldies think that this may have been a club record. We made the top 8 playoffs and as mentioned we lost to Christchurch in the first game, and we beat Sumner 61-0, and Linwood 33-17. With this we made the Semi finals and we were drawn to play Lyttelton over at their place. As most people know travelling over to Lyttelton to play them at their home ground is a huge challenge at the best of times let alone a Semi Final. We prepared well and had a good week coming into the game. Upon arriving at the ground the elements were going to be a challenge with a huge wind blowing straight down the ground which we were playing into in the first half and on a boggy field and against a fired up Lyttelton, the odds were well against us. Lyttelton came out and really put us to the sword with field position and the set piece we were down 22-0 at half time. Coming into the 2nd half we were still confident with the wind that we could bounce back and win the game but unfortunately this was not to be, we ended up losing 22-12 we gave them too big a head start and we couldn’t claw our way back and that was the end of our season. Lyttelton ended up winning the final the following week. The boys put their body on the line week in week out, and the commitment to trainings was superb. We were well lead by our captain, Dougie Stewart who once again led the troops on and off the field with maturity. Also we had a change of coaching staff early on with Scott Mcleish having to step aside due to family commitments and we were lucky enough to have Jarrod Ward come in and take the forwards over without disruption, thanks Jay Ray for coming on board at such short notice.