On the 31st of August the Newlands Intermediate rugby team went to Petone Recreation ground to play some rugby in an all day tournament.

 The games were 15 players a side and had 10 minute halves with a two minute break so in total we played one hundred minutes of full field rugby.There were two pools of four under 65kgs teams from a variety of different schools and the same number of open weight teams. Four kids from our school played for Tawa intermediate in this grade and they went on to win the open weight competition. In the group stages the Newlands Intermediate Under 65kgs team played Hutt Intermediate, EBIS and SWISS. We lost in our first game to Hutt intermediate but came back with comfortable wins against EBIS and SWISS. This meant that we came second in our pool after Hutt intermediate and were into the semi finals!

As we waited anxiously for the last game to finish and to find out who we would be playing in the semis we watched Tawa Intermediate Open weight team storm to another colossal victory with the help of four kids from our school. When we found out we would be playing we were partly excited and partly nervous. We were playing the one and only Raroa Intermediate rugby team. Everyone knew each other as we all play for the same rugby club and play together all the time. As soon as the whistle blew for the kick off it became apparent that we were extremely even with each other.

For the entire first half we stayed near the middle with multiple turnovers but nothing at all happening. We would try and try again to get through their defence line but they held strong, as did we when they had the ball. It was a total stalemate. After half time the game continued but suddenly Raroa had a sudden counter attack and they scored a try! There were no conversions in the games so immediately we knew we had to score, and score quickly as there was only six minutes left on the clock. We tried super hard and amazingly scored a great try that involved one of our players doing a massive run and diving for the try. When the final whistle blew we didn’t know what to do- the score was five all! After some talk with the referees we had to take off five players from each team. Sadly, they scored but the try should have been disallowed as the player was definitely offside. We were extremely sad about the loss but luckily we have a friendly against Raroa coming up so we can have our revenge against them then.

As we had lost against Raroa, we played the team that had lost in the other semi final which was the Tawa Intermediate team. Unfortunately, a couple of our players were injured and we were annoyed about our previous game so we lost by one try, finishing fourth out of eight teams. While we lost to Raroa, we hoped that they would win against Hutt intermediate but unfortunately they lost. All in all, it was a really fun day and we had a great time.