Steamers are winners on final day at least

Jeff Thwaites crashes over. Photos: Chris James

It's been an up, down, and up again season for the Bay of Plenty Steamers.

It wasn't the rampant victory it promised to be in the early stages, but they've done enough to beat Northland 38-35 in their Mitre 10 Cup season swansong at Tauranga Domain.

So they bring the curtain down on their season with two wins, to match the two they opened it with. The problem has been the six losses in between, which meant they were playing for nothing but pride today, instead of a possible semifinal.

And echoing their season overall they started today with a hiss and a roar as well. Props James Lay and Jeff Thwaites each crossed for muscular tries, as the Steamers set up camp on the visitors' line.

Then centre Liam Steel did the same just to show the backs know the way to the line as well.

All three tries were converted by Kaleb Trask, who has been settling into the first five-eight role vacated by injuries to Mike Delany and Jason Robertson, to give the blue and golds a 21-0 lead almost before Northland had put their mouthguards in.

They weren't done there either in their blitzkrieg opening. The Steamers continuing breaking the defensive line almost at will, with Kane Le'aupepe, Fa'asiu Fuatai, Tyler Ardron and Baden Wardlaw featuring, while they were tackling anything that moved whenever Northland managed to get their hands on the ball.

One of the most satisfying moments of the Steamers' season came at the end of their first half hour of dominance when debutante winger Emoni Narawa, one of the stars of the Bay's winning Jock Hobbs Memorial under 19 team, found himself unmarked at the end of a backline move and scampered over to open his try tally for the senior team.

Teenage winger Emoni Narawa had an outstanding debut

That however signalled the end of the Steamers' assault as they went off the boil and the visitors stepped up.

Within minutes Northland had their first break deep into Steamers territory, and their opening try followed.

A 26-7 halftime score then became 26-14 soon after the restart as they continued to build pressure, but the Steamers still had their moments.

Fuatai had the simplest of tries when Kaleb Trask kicked through the defensive line and Northland fumbled their clearance. Fuatai found the ball at his feet over the line and only to fall on it to score.

The move came after Narawa had again showed his enormous potential when he kicked and regathered down the right hand side to put the team into attacking position. Unfortunately for him it came at huge cost as he broke his leg in the tackle following the move.

The teams then spent the rest of the half exchanging blows, but Northland can claim to have had the better of it as they added three tries to the Steamers one. That came when replacement hooker Valentine Meachen found himself in possession from a Northland clearing kick that went wrong and spotted Chase Tiatia unmarked on the left hand touch. Meachen was smart enough to slip the ball to the all-action fullback who had a simple untouched run in to the line.

Valentine Meachen gets a try assist with an offload to Chase Tiatia

That put them 38-21 up with 10 minutes to play, and in a degree of comfort. Northland had other ideas though and added two converted tries to close it to 38-35. Unfortunately for them the hooter went just as the second conversion went over and the referee blew for fulltime.

Afterwards coach Clayton McMillan wasn't quite sure what to make of it all.

'A little bit of mixed emotions. Obviously happy that we won. Happy that for moments in the game we showed something close to our potential. Not happy with the end.”

Despite the disappointment of missing the semifinals he's excited about the young talent pointing the way for the future, giving a particular rap to Emoni Narawa.

'A very impressive debut from the young man. Hugely unfortunate that it looks like he's got a broken leg, so just another that's got the broken leg curse in the Bay of Plenty this year.

'But he looked electric when he got the ball, and probably even more pleased he was defensively sound as well.”

For Tyler Ardron, who inherited the captaincy for the latter part of the season with the injuries to Mike Delany and Tanerau Latimer, it was good to be able to see out the season with a smile on his face.

'Really good to finish with a win. It was a disappointing middle part to the season but when we look back we won four games and most years that's enough, unfortunately not this year. But pretty happy overall.

'The big stuff we were pretty happy with and overall it was a pretty fun year.”

The final table shows how close it was in the end, with the Steamers finishing fifth, just three points behind Northland who take the fourth playoff position. One win, or even three more bonus points, would have been enough to take them through.

The debrief on the season will be extensive, but for now Clayton has a simple analysis of their failure to make the playoffs.

'Despite our injuries we had plenty of opportunities to accumulate points and we didn't so we didn't deserve to be there.”

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