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Rassie Erasmus had a few words for the officials amid Perth chaos
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The three top performers from round nine of the Hilux NPC
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Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City, inimitable singer Bobby “Blue” Bland crooned in 1974. The classic R&B hit could be applied to the penultimate round of the 2026 NPC.
Big city provinces Auckland, Wellington and Otago were all beaten. Auckland lost to Manawatu (40-34) for only the third time since 1981 and fell out of playoff contention.
It was worse for woeful Wellington, suffering a record 11th consecutive loss 34-10 to Waikato. It was the Lions’ biggest home defeat to Waikato since a 39-10 loss in 1992.
That season Waikato won their first NPC title and fielded eight All Blacks in their starting XV against the Lions. Blindside flanker Tom Coventry scored three tries.
Otago squandered a 14-0 lead in 14 minutes to lose to North Harbour 32-21. North Harbour have won six matches, five more than in 2025. Their three losses to top eight sides Tasman, Canterbury and Manawatu have been by a combined six points.
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An athletic and combative pack holds its own.
Veteran Bryn Hall pulls the strings at halfback, and some Super Rugby teams might look to sign centre Tom Barham and winger Rory Taylor. Together they made five line breaks on Saturday night, something that’s becoming standard fare.
Earlier this month North Harbour’s Silverdale Procut Truffle Pigs won the Under 85kg National Club Cup, completing a 20-0 season. Could North Harbour make their first NPC final since 1994?
Canterbury beat Southland 34-21 in Christchurch with Gus Brown, 22, scoring two tries. The Napier Boys’ High School product made his Super Rugby Pacific debut for the Crusaders in a 52-31 win against the Blues on June 6 in Christchurch.
With fit and firing Bradley Slater, Scott Barrett, Josh Jacomb and Josh Lord, Taranaki smashed Hawke’s Bay 50-14 to soar into the top eight.
With that ammunition, the 2023 champions could finish their inconsistent campaign with a wet sail. Remarkably, in 2024 they won 63-19 in Napier with Bradley Slater scoring two tries in that game as he did on Sunday.
Tasman was boosted by similar All Blacks talent and beat Bay of Plenty at home on Thursday 45-26. The Steamers appear to have run out of puff, likely to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
Counties Manukau won’t make the playoffs but they overshadowed everyone with a spectacular Ranfurly Shield heist in Whangarei against Northland.
Who were the performers of the week in Round Nine of the NPC?
AJ Alatimu (Counties Manukau)
Paying $9 on the TAB, decimated in the scrums and trailing at halftime playing into the wind, Counties Manukau pulled off the impossible by toppling top-of-the-table Northland to claim the Ranfurly Shield for just the second time and for the first time since 2013.
First-five and Samoan international AJ Alatimu kicked a tricky 77th-minute angled penalty from 30 meters out to push the Steelers in front for the only time in the match, landing the goal from a similar spot to where he converted the match-tying try by elusive fullback Adam Morrison ten minutes earlier.
“Step back, count to four, and pray to God and it goes over,” Alatimu surmised of his winning kick.
It is now arguably the most famous kick in Counties history and a Ranfurly Shield challenger’s penalty to rival those of Lima Sopoaga for Waikato against Taranaki in 2025, Campbell Parata for Tasman against Hawke’s Bay in 2024, or, ironically, even Stuart “Chippy” Semenoff for North Auckland against Manawatu in 1978.
In 13th place with no chance of making the playoffs, this fixture was essentially the Steelers’ final.
Alatimu, who hasn’t had much luck in finals, delivered big time.
This year he was named Ardmore Marist Back of the Year. His club side topped the round robin of the McNamara Cup with a 13-1 record but lost the final 24-22 to Pukekohe.
Alatimu has scored 504 points in Major League Rugby but has lost the championship game twice, against the Seattle Seawolves in 2022 and the Houston SaberCats in 2025.
In addition to his clutch goal kicks, Alatimu was steady on attack and made eight tackles without a miss. Counties was forced to make 42 more tackles than Northland.
Line-hearted loose forward Adam Brash made 24 in a typically dogged display. He ranks among the top five tacklers in the NPC.
Brayden Iose (Manawatu)
Manawatu went 18 matches in a row between 1982 and 2022 without beating Auckland. Now the Turbos have back-to-back wins at Eden Park.
Manawatu followed their 33-31 win in 2023 with a stunning 40-34 upset on Friday night. The Turbos trailed 12-0 and fell behind twice more but still secured their fifth win of the season, their best effort since 2014.
As usual, Brayden Iose was inspirational, almost doubling the mileage of the next leading forward carrier, Che Clark.
His break swooping on a loose ball in the 67th minute, when Manawatu was narrowly ahead 26-22, set up a try finished spectacularly by Jai Tamati, a New Zealand Under-20s rep from Rotorua Boys High School.
Iose also made 13 tackles. Has Iose ever been considered by the All Blacks selectors?
There was a notable impact from the Manawatu bench, with the winning try scored by prop Feleti Sae-Ta’ufo’ou, with additional strikes from Tamati, former Northland flanker Rory Woods, and Palmerston North Boys’ High School outside back Liam O’Connor, who dribbled with the trickiness of Messi to outpace the Auckland defence.
Replacement hooker Mesulame Dolokoto made the final turnover.
Auckland blindside Randall Baker (6 ft 3, 114kg) looks like a handy prospect. The New Zealand Under-20s representative in 2025 played 15 games for the Yokohama Canon Eagles in Japan’s Top League after the World Rugby Junior Championships in Georgia.
In the Dame Farah Palmer Cup curtain-raiser, Manawatu beat Auckland 41-38 in golden point extra time to win their first-ever match at Eden Park and claim the JJ Stewart trophy, the Ranfurly Shield of women’s rugby for the first time.
Vetrain Corrineke Windle kicked just her second penalty in 41 games to win the match in the 86th minute.
Shannon Frizell (Tasman)
Backed up his strong start against Auckland with an imperious display against Bay of Plenty.
Frizell scored Tasman’s first try after an early concession, charging on the wing.
He set up Cooper Roberts three minutes before halftime to make it 26-12 to the hosts with a destructive run, shoving off two defenders and showing sleight of hand.Frizell’s nine carries resulted in two line breaks and 71 metres gained, the most productive forward in the game.
On defence, Frizell topped the tackle count with 17 tackles and snatched a turnover.
Since the retirement of the redoubtable Jeremoie Kaino (81 Tests, 68 wins) in 2015, the roll call of All Blacks blindside flankers includes Wallace Sititi, Samipeni Finau, Ethan Blackadder, Akira Ioane, Scott Barrett, Tupou Vaa’i, Elliot Dixon, Steven Luatua, Liam Squire, Vaea Fifita, Dalton Papali’i, Luke Jacobson, Peter Lakai and Frizell.
Frizell played 33 Tests, making him one of the more experienced players in that group. His last international was the Rugby World Cup final loss to South Africa (11-12) in 2023.
His best display in an All Blacks jersey, possibly the best by any six since Kaino, was that year in a 35-20 win against South Africa in Auckland.
Frizell didn’t lose form with the Toshiba Brave Lupus in Tokyo.
He played 37 games for 30 wins, scoring 21 tries as Lupus won the Top League in 2023–24 and 2024–25.
Is it time to go back to the future with a more mature Frizell? The Tupou Va’a experiment has been underwhelming. Has anyone else nailed down the All Blacks blindside berth stronger than Frizell since 2023?
On another note, Timoci Tavatavanawai looked lively despite having to remove wood splitters from his backside after so much time on the bench in South Africa. Tavatavanawai’s nine tackles produced three turnovers.
He was the most frequent ball-carrying Makko back.
Is there a more wasted talent in New Zealand than Tavatavanawai?
The leading breakdown turnover merchant in Super Rugby Pacific is also a beast with the ball in hand, beating the most defenders and delivering the sixth most offloads.
Is Tavatavanawai the punch the All Blacks need against heavier defences when in doubt about gaining parity in the set-piece? Who can remember the last line break Anton Lienert-Brown made for the All Blacks?
Furthermore, Tavatavanawai could be converted into a hybrid option, introduced to play multiple roles against fatiguing defences, much like Springboks Rugby World Cup winners Kwagga Smith (46 wins in 63 Tests) and André Esterhuizen (28 wins in 36 Tests), or Tasman teammate Leicester Fainga’anuku.
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