Wow! What a way to start off our season proper, with a magnificent team win over Suburbs Cougars by 45 - 25, and getting to sing the victory song at our first chance!
Suburbs Cougars being nice enough to give up home advantage for our Pakuranga United 50th Anniversary celebration, would have been looking for some payback after going down to the Mighty Datsuns last season. By gosh, they started the game playing like they wanted it too!
After going down to an early try, the Datsuns engines started to roar, lead by a player of the day performance from David. He couldn't do it alone though! Some excellent ball was being delivered by the forwards, with fantastic cleaning out at the ruck from Dean and Dylan. Joshua and Sam were beasts on defence, often filling in the one and two off defensive spots, ready to make life tough for the Cougars, who really struggled to get go forward ball in the face of the Datsuns wall.
Coming out in the second half trailing 40 - 5, the Cougars showed they were made of stern stuff, and started to use space to spread the ball wide to close the gap, but the Datsuns weren't finished! John and Carl's Jnr award winner Blake both doing hard work, running powerfully with the ball, chasing down the occassional breaks from the Cougars and showing heart and courage and a 'never say die' Datsuns attitude to make big tackles. Taking advantage of those opportunites, Kodi and Jamie made sure they were always there, ready to clean up the ball, make a well timed pass out to the waiting support, making huge tackles if needed, and making the occassional big break in return.
The Datsuns have a lot of speed and guile, but they also have some power! None show that better than Finn, Adam and Tyreese, who made strong tackle after strong tackle, made menaces of themselves trying to cleanout at the ruck and turn the ball over for the good guys, and running hard with the ball - with both Finn and Tyreese showing how hard they are to stop when given a chance on attack - both scoring tries either in close quaters or in one on one situations.
Finally, a big shoutout to JR (it was either JR, or the Green Flash) making the break of the game, out running their best player, to charge up the field on turnover ball and score his first ever try in his first ever full game of rugby.
Actual game footage of JR running for his try!
The Datsuns show, power, pace, guile and heart to get the season off to the best possible start, and getting to sing that victory song. See you at training next week fellas!
GO! GO! DATSUNS! GO!
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