Taranaki had to withstand a ferocious comeback from Tasman en-route to being crowned champions of New Zealand provincial rugby for the first time. Their 36-32 win made them the first non-Super Rugby franchise base to win the title since 1980 and only the ninth team to win the top prize since the NPC's inception in 1976.
It looked like it would be a lopsided result three-quarters of the way through the game, with the score at 33-13. The black and yellow defensive wall seemed impossible to breach, as they fanned out, came up fast and were physical in the tackle. They went into contact in packs and had Tasman under all sorts of pressure in close.
But you write a side like Tasman off at your peril. They possess a lethal back line and given the intensity of the game, it was always going to be the final 20 minutes where they would be the toughest to contain.
And so it proved. With the score at 33-27 in the dying stages it really was anyone's game. But Tasman's discipline let them down—as it had earlier in the game, too—and they suddenly found themselves needing two tries in two minutes after conceding a further three points.
Yet they even gave that a fair nudge, scoring one of the tries, but running out of time to score a second. Had they scored even 30 seconds earlier, then who knows? This is the sort of team that can score a try at any time from any position.
But it was Taranaki who emerged victors and you could tell how much it meant as the fans stormed the field in a wave of euphoria to celebrate with the players.
The win was built on a tough effort in the first half, where they frustrated Tasman into infringing and scored a series of opportunistic tries through the middle stages. Charlie Ngatai's double exemplified this, one a reminder of why you never give up on a chase, after collecting a wicked bounce, the second an interception in which he ran half the field to score.
Those two tries were crucial in forcing Tasman to chance their arm and chase the game in the final quarter of the game.
The impact of the win goes far beyond Taranaki, though. In a competition that has lost much of its prestige in recent years, it will be the best thing for it to have the trophy return to a union whom will appreciate it. It provides more interest in it looking ahead to next year, too, as for the majority of the past six years it has seemed a foregone conclusion that Canterbury would win at a canter.
But for now Taranaki will enjoy being champions.
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