Heartland Championship - news

[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]

[Stargazer]

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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.

[Stargazer]

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

[Stargazer]

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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Of Buller and West Coast, I've only seen wider training squads, so I assume/hope they'll post their finals quads for 2023.

[SouthernMann]

@Stargazer said in Heartland Championship - news:

North Otago:

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Two missing players for North Otago are Aleki Morris and Vili Koroi

[Stargazer]

@SouthernMann Yeah, North Otago squad was named on 17 July. There may have been some changes to some other squads as well. For example, Joe Royal was named in the NPEC squad, but has since then been included in the Auckland squad.