Southland Boys' High School produced some tenacious defence to hold on for a tense 13-12 victory against rival Otago Boys' High School in Invercargill yesterday.
The traditional interschool fixture doubled as a South Island Challenge Cup defence for the home team, so there was more than just school pride riding on the outcome.
Southland Boys' opened the scoring with a nice move from a scrum in the sixth minute.
First five-eighth Kaleb Talamahina flicked a clever inside pass to winger Allan Gillies who burst through to score.
Fullback Ben Pope drilled the conversion and added a penalty to give Southland Boys' a 10-0 lead at break.
Otago Boys' scored through lock Sean Jansen early in the second spell and halfback James Arscott's try set up a tense finish but Southland Boys' continued to work hard on defence and held on.
The visiting side was missing three key players. The trio were suspended at a judiciary hearing earlier this week following incidents during an interschool match against King's High School last week.
''They [the replacement players] all stood up tremendously and that showed, I suppose, the depth that we have,'' OBHS coach Ryan Martin said.
''When you lose three key senior players and have some young fellows come into the side at late notice and do what they did - it was pretty special.''
Martin felt his side dominated aspects of the game but ''blew a couple of really good opportunities''.
''It was a tough one actually. We probably had the better of the physical exchanges but a couple of unlucky calls against us really hurt us when we were hard on attack.
''We fought back from 10-0 down and played some really good rugby in the middle period of the second half.
''We pinned them in the corners and put really good pressure on them but we didn't convert enough of those opportunities.''
''It was a pretty lopsided penalty count ... so it was hard for us to get a flow in the game.''
