Grand replay for old foes

By Stuart Teather
AFTER 10 rounds of home-and-away games and one week of semi-finals, the two grand finalists from the 2007 rugby union Pillar Cup will face off again in this year’s decider.
The difference this time is last year’s runners-up, the Eastern Suburbs, will go into the game as red-hot favourites after blitzing through the 2008 season without losing a game.
The Suburbs’ opponents, the Westgate Power, had a more challenging season, dropping three games on their way to second position on the ladder.
The Suburbs took the honours in round one when the two sides met, belting the Power 35-10 in a comprehensive performance.
When the sides met again in round six it was a different story, with the Suburbs prevailing 22-14 in what was arguably their toughest test in the regular season.
On Saturday, the Suburbs secured their place in the grand final with a 31-13 victory over the North West Uni Lions.
Power secured their grand final berth with a 41-23 demolition of the Kingston Redbacks.
Suburbs coach Stephen Tia said his side had a sluggish start.
“We started off slowly, and just came over the top of them — like we did the week before,” he said.
“In the first half I don’t think we were switched on. We played solid without being spectacular, which is good.”
Tia denied the poor start was a worrying sign heading into the grand final.
“The good thing is our defence held up. If anything, it’s a positive. We’ve been worked over, and come out on top,” he said.
“We defended for a while in the second half — they kept on coming at us — and we defended really well, the boys kept covering for each other.
“Again our bench was excellent, we brought guys off the bench and they performed, I think that’s the difference between last year and this year, that our bench has actually taken us to a new level.”
Junior Salesulu, Michael Breen, Bava Makoni and Vea Mahina all ran through tries, and Michael Thompson had three conversions in the win.
On the grand final, Tia said he expected a difficult encounter.
“I’m expecting a real tough battle. At the moment nobody wants to see us keep going with our winning streak,” he said.
“I presume that everybody in the rugby community doesn’t like winners, so I think there’ll be everything thrown at us this weekend, and we will return the favour.”