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Kiwis secure semi-final place
Monday, July 11th, 2005
NZ Universities dominated a poor Scotland team to finish second in Pool A and qualify for Wednesday’s semi-finals of the Rugby League Student World Cup in Brisbane. NZU win their final pool match 70-4 and now face England, winners of Pool B for a place in Saturday’s Final. See below for full match report.
A commanding first half resulted in the New Zealand Universities rugby league going through and comprehensively beating Scotland 70-4 during its final Student World Cup pool match at Griffith University’s Nathan Campus late yesterday (Sunday) afternoon. The win cemented NZU into a semi-final berth for this Wednesday night against England, who finished unbeaten in Pool B after narrowly beating the Pacific Islands 30-24 on Saturday afternoon.
The other semi-final will be between hosts Australia and the runner up of Pool B France, in the main game starting at 8.15pm local time (10.15pm NZ time). France qualified after also having a runaway win by beating Ireland 82-18 on Saturday afternoon.
The New Zealand Universities side meanwhile went into the game with several positional changes within the camp as well as bringing in Scott Hurrell and Mikaere October for the injured standoff Mike Craig and outside centre Andreas Bauer. The first half was nearly all black as NZU capitalised on some poor Scottish defence and good running, especially in the centres where Tala Paleaaesina cashed in grabbing a hat-trick of tries, while his inside centre Mike Nathan, fullback Paul Aitkens, standoff Daniel McGregor and hooker Jimmy O’Brien each dotted down twice. Scotland gained its only try of the game when its right wing Calum Morrison crashed through the NZU defence in the 10th minute, before the students in black got back up, dusted itself off and successfully started all over again.
New Zealand Universities led 42-4 at halftime and although Scotland showed more fight in the second half with some good sliding defence, the tries kept coming for their opponents as O’Brien set up some fine offence from dummy half. Although happy with the overall result, NZU coach Trevor McLeod said his side still had lapses of concentration in the game and will need to again have some of his players work on some basic skills in the build-up to Wednesday’s semi-final matches. “Our forwards showed good go forward and support play in this match and overall worked well as a unit,†he said.
Nathan was the NZU player of the match, while second-row George Taunga, Aitkens, and prop Aina Masina also provided good momentum.
NZ Universities 70 (Tala Paleaaesina, 3, Paul Aitkens 2, Mike Nathan 2, Daniel McGregor 2, Jimmy O’Brien 2, Jamie McDonald, Scott Hurrell tries; McDonald 5, O’Brien 4 goals), Scotland 4 (Calum Morrison try). Halftime: NZU 42-4.
