Hi Everyone

A great road trip to Southland and a successful day for the As, the Bs and the Otago Country Senior side.

Saturday Rugby: We were on the road at 9am for Invercargill with Clark McLean on board, picking up Jamie Loyd in Mosgiel, the ORFU intern from England, and John Latta, ORFU Director, from Stirling. Plenty of chatter on the way down as we solved all things rugby, followed by a nice lunch in Invercargill at the home of Brian and Anne Dobson.

We were then off to Surrey Park to watch the Otago Country Under 18s, 16s and 14s before heading down to Rugby Park. All three country teams were playing full Southland representative sides so as you would expect they struggled to compete particularly in the first half as all three country teams were all playing into a strong wind. However, in the second half they were much more competitive with the Under 18s more than holding their own.

While we arrived too late at Rugby Park to see the Otago Under 18 Girls side against Southland, they ended up winning comfortably by 39 points to 20. This is a good result for the girls and another indication of how womens rugby is growing in the province.

The Otago B mens side raced away to a 21-7 lead after 33 minutes and then held off a strong come back from Southland B to eventually win by 28-24.

It was great to receive a text from Diane Ede before the main game had kicked off to let us all know that the Otago Country Senior team had defeated Canterbury Country in Christchurch by 33-29. This is the second consecutive year that the country side has won this fixture - well done to the Management and Players on this outstanding result. This certainly justifies playing teams at a higher level in preparing for this fixture, including Southland B and Otago B.

There was a good crowd in attendance to watch the Otago v Southland main fixture. Otago had a promising first half making the most of their opportunities to lead by 24 points to 3, scoring four tries in the process. The second half was more even with each side scoring three tries but the result was never in doubt. Otago now moves into third place in the competition with 15 points with the following games to play – Canterbury(H), Auckland(A), Bay of Plenty(H), Tasman(H) and Waikato(A).

We all attended the after-match function in the supporters club and then headed off on a most enjoyable trip home. We stopped off at the Mataura Pub to watch the final 15 minutes of the Test and then apart from dropping off Jamie and John, we continued on through to Dunedin. Unfortunately, when we got to Portobello at 12.30am, the pub was still open and since I had not had a beer all day we decided to have a couple of quiets with the locals!! All in all a great day out.  

What a wonderful weekend to look forward to with my beloved Otago 1998 side having their 20^th re-union since winning the NPC. Along with the 1998 Rebels Netball team which also won the National Championship, this will be a special time for all involved. If you don’t hear from me next week you will know why!!

Des Smith MNZM

President

Article added: Monday 17 September 2018