A club field day with Suburbs, our neighbours in rugby, welcomed us all to the annual get-together luncheon. Always an enjoyable day with Suburbs, reliving past experiences with Peter Clement and our Roger Fa’logo as guest speakers. Amazing to hear that in the 90-plus years we have played Suburbs, they were ahead 54-43 in the ledger, so today we had confidence that we could win one back to our credit. I was told that 18 games were played today on all three fields, and another four last night, all against Suburbs. That’s great to hear from our Junior Boys people.

At least the day started well, with the Under 21s having a big win over Suburbs, 60-7, which places them in the top four and only seven points from leaders Grammar TEC.

However, the start in the Premier game wasn’t as great. Two tries down in eight minutes and we were staring at a 14-0 scoreline.

This team of ours has heart. They attacked the Suburbs goal line with zest, and some good defence kept us out before debutant Daniel Lawrence scored out wide. Another try eventuated soon after and we were within sniffing distance at halftime, with the score at 19-12.

The second half was all Waitemata. They tested the Suburbs defensive line throughout.

The forwards were up for the game. I was very excited by debutant Daniel Lawrence, a Liston College First XV player in 2025. He has such a variety of skills to offer our Premier side. He’s really keen on wanting the ball in his hands and he shows up where the ball is heading. He has this great perception in the way a certain M. Jones had at his age — and he is only 18 years old.

Again, our lineout showed marked improvement on past weeks, and the work being done by Sooty and Bryan in developing the combinations with Ben and the jumpers like “The Z” (from the West Island) is showing.

Our loose forwards were up for it in this game and started to create havoc by running hard at the Suburbs defensive line. This started to create some holes in that defence, and Kyan (our fullback) really ran some nice lines to score. With Hakioro, the right winger, making some progress down that channel, another fine try came about and now we were only 25-24 behind with 10 to go.

We poured into their half and were close on a few occasions, but it came down to the last penalty from wide out. Max Dillon’s attempt shaved the uprights and, as they say, that was it!!

We all may feel disappointed to come so close to winning back the Best of the West Trophy, but we can only think of what could have been.

The improvement from last week was very evident. The forwards got into their work in the second half to give us a platform for that last five minutes.

Again, Ezra, the Spanish halfback, showed that he’s getting used to the NZ style of football. I’d like him to use that box kick a bit more, as Suburbs looked all at sea with it. Cooper Sinton came on for the last 20 minutes and I liked what he added to the game today. His clearance from the base was good and his option-taking was smart.

The midfield of Boaz and Kokelolani, who last week got beaten up by the GT big guys, today maintained a tighter defensive line and, for smaller guys, handled it well.

Whoever says that club rugby is dying needed to sit on the sideline today to get an understanding that community rugby is alive, well and vocal. The crowd got involved in the action and both sets of supporters had their cheerleading moments.

It was good to see our Suburbs guests stay afterwards, including one of the icons of his time with 89 caps for Auckland, one of Auckland’s greatest, Glenn Rich.

As well, a number of our Old Boys were present and we look forward to seeing them all next week for the game v Eden at home.

The Premier Development side lost 65-5 against Papatoetoe Prem 1, and our women’s side went down 30-29 against Papakura, which by all accounts was a game they should’ve won.

My last word….. Don’t take life that seriously. Suburbs were a club formed from the likes of Avondale, Mt Albert and Mt Roskill — a merger or amalgamation of sorts!!

The Weasel wants to point out that the views stated and commented on are only those of the Weasel alone, but he can be bribed to express other political views.