Hokitika’s Wests senior rugby team look likely to sit out the rest of this year’s West Coast competition, with coach Gordon Davidson saying the loss of four tight forwards to injury in the past two weeks has exacerbated their lack of forwards.

On Saturday, Wests defaulted to South Westland.
Meanwhile, Marist, with only 13 players an hour before they were due to play at Cass Square, piled 50 points in a thrashing of Kiwi. Blaketown ran away with their game against Grey Valley in the second half, taking the score from 12-9 at half-time to 57-16 by the final whistle.

Davidson said Wests’ decision was not one they wanted to make, however the team had informed the West Coast Rugby Union that unless things improved within a week they would be pulling out of the rest of the season. “We lost four tight forwards within the space of two weeks to non-rugby injuries, it’s got to the stage where we can’t carry on.”'

Legally, the team was not allowed to play without four tight forwards anyway, he said.
“We defaulted (on Saturday) and we’ll look at things this week.”

Marist coach Craig Neiman attributed his side’s 50-19 beating of Kiwi to two in-form players, prop Aled Thomas and No 8 Napol Langi, who filled the second-five jersey at the weekend.

“We were actually going to default. With an hour to go before the game we only had 13 guys but we managed to scrape together a few more players.”

Despite not having much of a reserves bench, the whole team worked hard for 80 minutes.
“It was a good effort by the boys.”