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| The Dargaville Ford Western sharks went down 29-17 to Waipu in their final game of the 2007 Northland wide premier club rugby season. | |||
| The match, played last Saturday in very cold drizzly conditions at Dargaville's R.D.1 rugby park was another tight encounter throughout. The sharks pack lead in come on fashion by front rowers Tex Donald, Hayden Lang and Craig Williamson, turned in a top draw effort to a man, and gradually gained supremacy over a very useful Waipu eight. | |||
| By the end of the game the sharks had mastery in the scrums, and were constantly making good yardage with many well executed driving mauls. This advantage however, was not able to be capitalized on by their backs, who frankly had a day they would rather forget. They too often kicked when they should have passed, and in the second half tried too many adventurous passes when perhaps some long kicks with the breeze would have paid big territorial dividends. The sharks backs unfortunately, only flowed on attack on rare occasions, and some defensive blunders by them mid match, when they missed a few simply tackles, let the Waipu rearguard in for three rather soft try?s, costing the sharks of a chance of victory they otherwise could have had. | |||
| Try scorers for the home team were Ben Webster, Steve Tane and Mark Russell, with Hayden Hutchinson adding one conversion. | |||
| The Western sharks, however can take plenty of plus?s from their efforts this year in a season in which they have been very competitive in all games, and have had their fare share of� victories, knocking over some of the top clubs in the process. | |||
| Congratulations go to Western sharks players Solomone Palu, Brendan Nathan, Hayden Hutchinson and Matt McCully for their selection in the Northland development team, and Matt Webster for his selection in the Under 21 squad. ��� | |||
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