Superior Auckland Side Dismisses Cup Bid

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31079, 7 June 1966, Page 3

Superior Auckland Side Dismisses Cup Bid

Auckland, with superior handling and positional play, defeated Canterbury, 28-5, to retain the Northern Union Rugby League Cup at the Show Grounds yesterday.

Canterbury could not handle the sloppy ground conditions and dropped numerous passes, thus throwing away the 13-12 advantage that W. P. Noonan won over W. Satherley in the scrums.

Auckland was by far the more mobile team, particularly in the forwards. Whereas Canterbury was sluggish in possession, Auckland ran with confidence.

The architects of Auckland’s win were the loose forward, B. E. Castle, and the freerunning stand-off half, J. D. Ellwood. Both pierced the defence almost at will from the play-the-balls, although it was noticeable that Auckland could not penetrate from set play. The 17st prop, A. Wiggs, scored three tries for Auckland. On each occasion the ball was thrown to Wiggs the Canterbury line and the burly prop surged over. On one occasion the combined efforts of four defenders could not halt Wiggs. Auckland’s other tries were scored by the hooker, Satherley, and the full-back. R. B. Tait, and Castle. Ellwood kicked four goals and Tait one. P. M. V. White scored Can-

terbury’s try late in the second half and I. T. Drayton kicked a goal. The ground conditions had a great influence on the match. Only the area between the 25 and the goalline at the southern end of the ground was clear of mud. The goal-kickers suffered. Tait missed four of his five attempts, Drayton kicked only one of six and, although he was successful with four of his five goal-kicks, Ellwood was fortunate to have drier marks from which to kick. Passing Well The Auckland pack threw the ball around with surprising freedom. Castle was the best distributor of the ball and even when he was forced to balloon long passes over the heads of other players, he was extremely accurate. Drayton did not have a successful day with his kicking, both for the line and for goal. Two of his goal kicks slid off his boot almost at right angles to his target.

Canterbury’s advantage of 12-6 in the penalties served only to feed the Auckland players with the ball that Noonan had won in the scrums. Drayton had eight attempts to find the line but succeeded only twice. He appeared to put too much importance on length and not enough on finding touch. There were only three scrum penalties in the match, most of the infringements being off-side play. However, on two occasions, G. R. Bailey used stiff arm tackles. The second knocked White to the ground when he did not have the ball but these were the only incidents in an otherwise incident-free game. Fifteen minutes from the end G. R. Bailey was replaced by G. Brown. Brown came Into scrum-half and P. J. Schultz

and J. D. Ellwood moved out. Apart from his kicking Drayton had a good game. He saved three certain tries With smother tackles and missed only one tackle—that when Castle ducked under Drayton's high tackle and dived over just on time for a fully deserved try. A. N. Amer had little to do but C. C. Preece made one or two runs and recovered several loose balls. The centres had little chance to attack for the Auckland defence was sure from set play. The only run of any note was by B. W. Langton, who picked up a dropped ball and ran 35 yards before being caught by R. A. Mincham.

The Canterbury backs did well to keep Auckland quiet from set play. P. V. Smith was up on Ellwood every time and stifled any planned attacks. G. H. Clarke made a couple of good runs from the scrum but was inclined to hold on too long. From the play-the-balls Ellwood was dangerous. He had a fine eye for the gap and was the best all-round back. R. W. Bailey was unsually quiet and cut through only once.

Schultz and G. R. Bailey—who did not receive the ball until after 24 minutes’ play—were no more than solid and the dangerous runners, F. R. Christian and Mincham, received only limited opportunities.

At full-back, Tait handled extremely well and was a source of danger to Canterbury when he joined in the back-line. His kicking, however, was disappointing. Apart from Castle, A. Kriletich and Wiggs were prominent in the Auckland pack. Kriletich was a strong.runner in possession and Wiggs, standing out amongst the backs when the ball was played close to the line, was

usually too strong, for one man to stop.

O. Danielson was closely watched by the defence, but M. Turner and W. Satherley had one or two runs. Not as prominent as usual, M. H. Mohi and W. A. Flavell, found that the Auckland defence was fully qualified to stop any bursting runs from the rucks. Their handling, and that of the other Canterbury forwards, was affected by the wet ball and muddy ground. Noonan did his job well in the scrums and he and J. H. Fisher did a lot of tackling. D. W. Moore was rather quiet and J. L. White could not use his side-step and speed because of the defence and the mud.

Auckland led 11-2 at halftime. The first try came after 12 minutes when Danielson burst through and Tait scored after receiving a pass from Ellwood. The other two first-half tries came from barging runs by Satherley and Wiggs. Christian received a knock early in the second half and moved to the wing. Wiggs scored two barging tries within 10 minutes to make Auckland, with the score 21-2, safe from defeat. 35-Yard Run Canterbury's try followed a 35-yard run by Langton after Auckland had lost the ball. Min cham caught Langton, but from the ensuring play-the-ball on the half-way line the ball was swung out to Flaveli, to Preece, and then to P. M. V. White, who ran 30 yards to score. Mincham had his only long run five minutes from the end. Christian reversed the ball back to him, but after running 50 yards Mincham was held up bv Drayton. His pass to Kriletich was forward. However, a few minutes later Castle weaved his way past Drayton to score. Ellwood's conversion made it 28-5. The teams were: Canterbury.—l. T. Drayton; A. N. Amer, P. M. V. White (captain), R. W. Langton, C. C. Preece; P. V. Smith, G. H. Clarke; J. L. White; W. A. Flavell, M. H. Mohi; J. H. Fisher, W. P. Noonan, D, W. Moore. Auckland.—R. B. Tait; G. R. Bailey (replaced by G. Brown), F. R. Christian, R. W. Bailey, R. A. Mincham; J. D. Ellwood, P. J. Schultz (captain); B. E. Castle; M. Turner, A. Kriletich; O. Danielson, W. Satherley, A. Wiggs. The referee was Mr J. J. Campbell (Wellington).