Upper Hutt Rams and Oriental-Rongotai win American Ambassador’s tournament

Above: Upper Hutt Rams captain Hayden Schrijvers (left) being presented with the American Ambassador’s Trophy and Rams wing Max Pearson (right) running away to score one of his two tries in the Cup final against Marist St Pat’s.

The Upper Hutt Rams Men’s and Colts teams and the Oriental-Rongotai Women’s side celebrated wins in today’s Wellington Club Sevens Championship American Ambassador’s tournament at Trentham Memorial Park.

The Upper Hutt Rams won the Men’s division for the second time in three years, the Ories Women’s side went back to back in the Women’s section and the Upper Hutt Rams lifted the Colts competition.

The Rams beat Marist St. Pats 39-14 in the Men's Cup final.

The turning point was early in the second-half when Upper Hutt was up 17-14, but MSP was hot on attack.

The Rams won a tighthead and hurried the ball out to Max Pearson who surged past the last defender and raced 55 metres to score.

That made it 22-14, at which point Upper Hutt took control. They added three more tries to win resoundingly.

Kayne Hammington returned from the Manawatu and celebrated with a five-pointer while Daniel Schrijvers added a second following his 75-metre stunner in the first-half.  Earlier, Pearson had been a major influence in Upper Hutt jumping to a 17-0 lead. He scored the first try and created the second for Sio Luimanu.

Schrijvers' effort was superb. He snaffled a loose ball and sprinted down the middle of the park like a greyhound. He was clobbered by a retreating defender, but spun like a pinball and continued to stride towards the line. He was eventually overhauled by two defenders five-meters out, but extended his arm and stretched out to touchdown.

The Upper Hutt Rams had beaten Old Boys University 19-7 in their Men’s Cup semi-final, while Marist St Pat’s went into the final having defeated Tawa 21-5 in their Cup semi-final.

The Rams, OBU, MSP and Tawa were the four pool winners from the morning session.

Oriental-Rongotai won a similar all-action Women’s final against Wainuiomata. Ories streaked to an early lead, but Wainuiomata came back hard at them late in the first half and early in the second. Ories weathered the storm, and it was a runaway try to Amanda Rasch, coming back from a long injury layoff, that helped clinch victory. The Women’s final was closer than the 35-15 scoreline.

For Ories, Pride wings Ayesha Leti-Liga and Timena Tuma’ai were constant threats all day, while Wianuiomata were boosted by Wellington Pride co-captain Jackie Patea and youngster Sieni Mose.

Going into the final, Ories had won a series of matches without conceding a point, beating Poneke 38-0, HOBM 28-0 and Avalon 36-0 and again 50-0.

OBU won the Women’s 3rd versus 4th playoff in a thriller over Marist St Pat’s. With scores locked up 17-17 on fulltime, the match went to a golden point and OBU’s Pride mid-fielder Georgia Daals streaked 60 metres to score the winning try for the Impalas.

A last minute try to Josh Dewar earned Upper Hutt a 19-15 victory over St. Patrick's College, Silverstream in the Colts final.

The Junior Rams led 12-5 following two tries to Josh Huston-Tupou, but the schoolboys rallied and tries to Josh Brown and Jack Wright edged Silverstream ahead.

Brown was sin binned for a high tackle and this took its toll on the Silverstream defense.  Exhausted by the blazing sun, and a hard days' toil, they were out-flanked and Dewar won the acclaim of the locals.

Earlier Asafo Aumua had threatened to win the tournament on his own for Silverstream. He was a human wrecking-bull. He scored 11 of their 17 tries heading into the final. He scored the winner as a second-half replacement in a tight tussle against Tawa. He scored three tries against Avalon, four tries against Ories and haunted Tawa again with yet another hat-trick.

To their credit Upper Hutt gang-tackled Aumua in the decider and greatly reduced his influence.

The biggest influence on the tournament at the start of the day was the late withdrawal of three teams. This meant a fixture list that resulted in the highest scoring team by way of four try bonus points and total points reaching the semi-final by default. The remaining teams had to play crossover games.

Hutt Old Boys' Marist achieved the automatic semi-final place. They were the only team to achieve two four-try bonus point victories against Wellington 28-12 and Ories 20-17 - Wellington Lions prop Joe Apikotoa scored a try with the last play in the former game.

Upper Hutt were underwhelming early. Huston-Tupou scored two tries to see them narrowly scrape past North's, but they hammered 21-5 by St. Pats Town. Siosaia Paese scored two tries as he did against North's earlier - a game Town dropped 38-19.

Of the nine teams only Silverstream and Hutt Old Boys' Marist were unbeaten after pool play.

Upper Hutt picked up their act in the crossover section. In a bruising semi-final they accounted for Hutt Old Boys' Marist 19-5. Huston-Tupou, Tynan Barrett and Jayden Treviranus scored tries.

The other Colts semi-final was cracker between Silverstream and Tawa. It featured nine tries, but Aumua was the difference in the 32-24 win.

The diminutive Adam Preston was impressive for Tawa. He scored and created a try after earlier sneering a hat-trick against Avalon.

Hutt Old Boys Marist won the Colts Plate final beating Tawa 31-15.

In other results, Petone won the Men’s Plate final, defeating Paremata-Plimmerton 19-12.
Petone, with Lester Maulolo and their captain Jarrad Adams running freely all day, had beaten Wainuiomata in their Plate semi-final.

Paremata-Plimmerton played well. They opened the morning session with two wins, beating Wellington 26-21 and Petone 24-17 – an intercept try on halftime proving a key play in their first match of the day against Petone.

Paremata-Plimmerton then held the eventual tournament champions the Upper Hutt Rams to 14-12,with a solitary conversion proving the difference. The team from Mana then scored six tries on their way to beating Avalon 36-5 in their Plate semi-final.

The day had started off at 9.00am with two of the tournament’s favoured sides, the Rams and the Hutt Old Boys Marist Eagles, clashing in match one. The Rams won this match 14-0 to knock HOBM out of the Cup rounds. HOBM went on to beat Northern United 42-7 to claim the Bowl title.

Oriental-Rongotai and Johnsonville were the two Men’s teams that missed out playing in the post-Pool section of the tournament. Ories started out with a 45-0 win over Johnsonville (the day’s biggest win) but then lost 12-14 to the Rams before being held to the day’s only draw, 19-19 with Petone. Johnsonville lost all three games.

Poneke lost their Bowl final to Hutt Old Boys Marist, but this was immediately after they had played Norths, making it a tough 28 minutes of rugby at the end of the day for Poneke.

Men’s and Women’s Results (Please note results are all unofficial, and there are some gaps to fill in):

Men’s Pool Results
Upper Hutt Rams 14 – HOBM 0
Ories 45 – Johnsonville 0
MSP 22 – Petone 5
Paremata-Plimerton 26 – Wellington 21
Avalon 26 – Norths 5
Tawa 21 – Wainuiomata 19
OBU 42 – Poneke 19
HOBM 26 – Johnsonville 14
Upper Hutt Rams 14 – Ories 12
MSP 24 – Wellington 12
Paremata-Plimmerton 24 – Petone 17
Tawa 21 – Norths 5
Wainuiomata 33 – Poneke 12
OBU 24 – Avalon 0
HOBM 31 -Wellington 0
Ories 19 – Petone 19
HOBM 31 – Johnsonville 0
Upper Hutt Rams 14 – Pareamata-Plimmerton 12
Wainuiomata 32 – Avalon 0
OBU 24 – Tawa 15
Norths 33 – Poneke 24

Women’s Pool Results
Wainuiomata 17 – Old Boys University 7
Norths 38 – Petone 0
Ories 38 – Poneke 0
OBU 28 – HOBM 0
MSP 31 – Petone 5
Avalon 19 – Poneke 7
Wainuiomata 33 – HOBM 5
Norths 26 – MSP 5
Ories 36 – Avalon 0

Women’s Crossover Games
Wainuiomata 47 – Poneke 0
Norths 35 – HOBM 7
Avalon 36 – Petone 5
OBU 17 – MSP 14
Ories – Bye (top qualifier)

Men’s Bowl Semi-finals
HOBM beat Poneke
Norths beat Wellington

Men’s Plate Semi-finals
Paremata-Plimmerton 36 – Avalon 5
Petone beat Wainuiomata

Men’s Cup Semi-finals
MSP 21 – Tawa 5
Upper Hutt Rams 19 – OBU 7

Men’s Bowl Final
HOBM 42 – Norths 7

Men’s Plate Final
Petone 19 – Paremata-Plimmerton 12

Men’s Cup Final
Upper Hutt Rams 39 – MSP 14

Women’s Cup Semi-finals
Ories 50 – Avalon 0
Wainuiomata 34 – Norths 17

Women’s 3rd v 4th Playoff
OBU 24 –MSP 17 (17-17 at fulltime)

Women’s Cup Final
Ories 35 – Wainuiomata 15