Otago nearly played spoiler team at the Australian Rules NPC at the weekend.
It ended its campaign in Wellington winless, but went close to upsetting both Canterbury and Auckland. Just weeks after picking up its first win against a Christchurch club team, it was a hugely positive result for the sport in the region, which seems to be heading in the right direction. In pouring rain, Otago led most of the way against Canterbury on Saturday, eventually going down 13-11 in a low-scoring encounter. Otago coach Warwick Kain said the conditions made scoring difficult and Canterbury’s two quick goals proved too much for Otago to come back from.
"The first game [against Canterbury] was played in absolute teeming horizontal rain and it was diabolical to score," Kain said.
"We were up for a significant time and just had a couple of lapses. We should have scored a lot more, we had a lot of opportunities to score, we just didn’t capitalise.
"It’s all very well to say we had a couple of lapses and they scored two goals, but we probably should have scored five or six earlier than that. But we just didn’t and they got a couple of quick ones and they got their heads up."
In its second game Otago almost caused the upset of the tournament, pushing the champion Auckland team closer than anyone else. Kain said it was Otago’s best performance of the weekend, although in the end it fell 26-17. By the time its last game against Wellington came around the effects of playing three games in one weekend showed and the team was beaten 86-26.
"The Auckland game we were up again, then they got a quick one on us. At halftime we looked like we might get up, so that was a great game.
"We were just a bit of a walking wounded against Wellington. They’d had a good win against Canterbury in the morning and just kept rolling, really.
"They’ve got quite a good rotation through the midfield and it was hard to keep up with them. There was a bit of wind there and they took advantage of the wind and we didn’t quite."
Nonetheless he was very happy with the tournament and said on another day his team may have beaten Canterbury.
"In dry conditions I think we were a five or six-goal better team than Canterbury, but in a slug fest it’s not quite the same."
Auckland won the tournament, claiming victories in all three matches, Wellington finished second and Canterbury was third.
