Heartland Championship - news

[Bovidae]

https://www.allblacks.com/news/south-canterbury-storm-into-meads-cup-final/

South Canterbury romped to a 76-9 win over King Country at Pleasant Point, scoring 12 tries without answer with fullback Liuele Simote crossing for three tries and wings Kalavini Leatigaga and No8 Siu Kakala both scoring two tries.

Whanganui faced a tougher contest before beating Thames Valley 25-18 in the second semifinal.

In the Lochore Cup section, Mid Canterbury upset top qualifiers North Otago 31-15 while fourth qualifier Ngāti Porou East Coast headed Horowhenua Kapiti 37-30 with halfback and captain Sam Parkes completing a hat-trick of tries. Wing Louis Northcott completed a hat-trick of tries for Horowhenua Kapiti.

[Machpants]

@Bovidae big improvement for East coast

[Duluth]

[Higgins]

Magnificent day in Ruatoria for this Lochore Cup Final. Grassroots rugby at it's best!
Let's hope that it is as good a games as yesterdays Meads Cup Final. Mid Canterbury really up against it after the spine chilling haka from Ngati Porou East Coast that ended up with teams eyeballing each other less than 6 inches apart!

[Higgins]

And the Coast in for a 20 metre forward drive try, helped a bit by the southerners not committing that many players to combat it.
East Coast 07 - 00 Mid Canterbury after three minutes.

[Duluth]

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The fixtures page on the website still says 2022, but it is the 2023 draw.

Bunnings Warehouse Heartland Championship 2023 draw announced

Domestic rugby season preparations across the Heartland Rugby Unions are in full swing with the 2023 season draw announced for the Bunnings Warehouse Heartland Championship.

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Cyclone Gabrielle: Road destruction set to hit Heartland rugby heroes hard

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South Canterbury have named their "Ranfurly Shield Challenge Wider Training Squad":

[Higgins]

Interesting to see a Nick Croswell listed amongst the loose forwards. Can it possibly be the former Hurricane, Highlander and Chief from the early to mid 2010s?

[Bovidae]

His brother is listed too.

[Higgins]

@Bovidae Also Hone Haerewa who had been the Captain for a couple of years is also back in the squad after his sojourn up in North Harbour.

[Higgins]

@Bovidae said in Heartland Championship - news:

His brother is listed too.

I see that and he too played a couple of times for the Chiefs whilst at Taranaki. Think he also laced up the boots for the Coast for a season about four or five years back as well.

[mikey07]

@Higgins See Faifili Levave is back I played against him two weeks ago he still runs pretty hard. He was making a few breaks against us, my claim to fame was I ran him down before the tryline. An absolutely lovely bloke off the field though.

[mikedogz]

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The Heartland Championship starts this Saturday, 12 August 2023.

I'll post all squads below (except the NP East Coast and Thames Valley squads that have already been posted):

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North Otago:

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