St Pat's Town and St Mary's top their pools at Condors

St. Mary's College and St. Pats Town have advanced to the Cup Quarter-finals of the Condor Sevens national secondary school tournament in Auckland after a successful first day. St. Pats Silverstream weren't so fortunate, losing all three games to be regulated to the bowl section.

Wellington Boys Champions St. Pats Town were expected to advance from their group which included Thames High School, St. Paul's College (Auckland) and Christchurch Boys' High School.
Town hit the ground running with a 43-0 trouncing of Thames High School. Brothers Keelan and Grayson Whitman scored four tries between them and Saia Paese bagged a double.

Town started strongly against St. Paul's before easing off to win 21-10. Ricky Manu Laiatea, Paese and Billy Procter crossed the chalk.

Town's last game followed a similar pattern with Paese collecting a brace and Town winning 29-17, despite two tries from flyer Matthew Jensen.

St. Marys faced an anxious finish to their winner takes all game against Tauranga Girls College at the end of the day.

Ahead 12-7, Captain Monica Tagoia bullied her way through the defence and appeared to have scored the winning try, after earlier missing a handy conversion to a previous try. However an off the ball infringement resulted in a penalty and yellow card against St. Mary's. Tauranga tied the scores with a try, but the conversion slid wide off the target and St. Mary's qualified top of their group for the Cup quarters on a superior points differential - playing Tauranga GC again in their first game on Sunday.

Jade Tuilaepa's 85-metre try for Tauranga was one of the best of the whole day. Lyric Faleafaga was on song for St. Mary's scoring four tries across the day, Cheyne Copeland and Tagoai got three each.

A feature in the St Mary's two first-up 43-0 and 41-0 wins over Dunedin's St Hilda's Collegiate and Auckland's Mt Roskill College was their big defence.

Silverstream was beaten by Westlake BHS (28-12), De La Salle College (17-21) and Rotorua BHS (40-12). Rotorua appear to be a genuine title contender, Westlake bullied Stream at the breakdown and despite two tries by Fritz Rayasi in the De La Salle game, Silverstream ran out of time.

In first-up games on Sunday, St Mary's face Tauranga GC again in their Cup quarter-final at 8.50am, St Pat's Town meet Feilding HS in their Cup quarter-final at 11.30am and St Pat's Silverstream encounter South Auckland's Wesley College in their Shield quarter-final at 9.30am.