The South Westland rugby team returned home from Greymouth a little dazed on Saturday after Marist loose forward Napol Langi led his side in typical thumping style to a 36-17 victory at Rugby Park. Kiwi, meanwhile, competed strongly against Blaketown holding the seagulls to a one-point, 8-7 lead at half-time but eventually losing, 23-7.

Langi, who switched between blindside flanker and No 8 throughout the match, halted South Westland’s ball carriers in their tracks many times, and opened play up with a number of well-timed passes and line breaks, even sprinting 60m for an individual try midway through the second half.

In a relatively tidy match, considering the damp conditions, Marist made use of the opportunities that came their way and displayed wall-like goal line defence to come back from their narrow loss to Blaketown last week. South Westland, unfortunately, were unable to contain the likes of Maleli Mudu, who scored a hattrick, and Eroni Uluiborutu in the Marist backs.

Cory Deans was, as usual, the director for the southerners at pivot, but moments of poor decision making and simple mistakes — kicking the ball out on the full, for instance — cost his side. Deans actually put South Westland into an early lead less than fi ve minutes into the game as he picked up halfback Kip Nolan’s clever grubber kick and scored.

No 8 David Crouchley’s sinbinning led to a try for Marist, Mudu making up for early mistakes by beating fi ve defenders with his goose-stepping before skipping over. Crouchley came back on to the fi eld but Mudu managed to finish off an Adam Lewis-orchestrated eff ort (another grubber) for his second fi ve-pointer.

South Westland managed to pilfer the ball from the kick off and as their forwards made head way up the middle of the fi eld, Langi came out of nowhere to cream hooker Mike Riley and completely turn around the direction of momentum. Marist conceded a penalty soon after but Deans missed it, and had Langi not come in when he did South Westland would have likely scored.

After half-time Langi came into the fray again, licking his lips as he burst through a massive defensive hole beside a scrum and could not be stopped on his way to the posts. Mudu’s conversion made it 19-5 to Marist. Langi touched down only seconds later but the try was disallowed due to a forward pass in the build-up play.

South Westland immediately went into full-on attack mode when they attained possession, and made some good ground. On one occasion Nolan looked set to charge all the way through broken play to the try line, but Langi decided that was not about to happen and completely annihilated the halfback.

Referee Jamie McGeady penalised Langi for using no arms in the tackle but really he had no time to get his arms around Nolan because he bounced back so quickly. Flanker Ben Monk eventually scored for South Westland, but Marist wing Phil McKinnell took one back at the other end not fi ve minutes later. Eroni Uluiborutu then put the game out of reach with a try under the posts. Tries to Deans and Mudu came before the final whistle.

In a pleasant change to the subdued crowds of past weeks, a group of South Westland supporters added more than their share of atmosphere to the game with plenty of vocal contributions, and spurred a few of the Marist supporters into action.

Results —
Marist 36 (M Mudu 3, E Uluiborutu, N Langi, P McKinnell tries; Mudu 3 cons)
South Westland 17 (C Deans 2, B Monk tries; Deans con)

Blaketown 23 (R Th omson, G Iafeta, S Pascoe tries; N Williamson pen; B Cain pen, con)