David Havili yesterday saved the Canterbury Crusaders with a drop goal a minute into extra-time to give the Super Rugby Aotearoa leaders a 30-27 win over the Wellington Hurricanes.
The Hurricanes, bottom of the table, led 27-20 in Wellington in the third quarter and threatened to inflict a second consecutive loss on the Crusaders, who last week fell to the Otago Highlanders.
By the end of regulation time, the defending champions had leveled the score at 27-all, bringing the golden-point rule into play for the second time in New Zealand, and a minute after the restart Havili slotted the match-winning drop goal.
Two early George Bridge tries had the Crusaders ahead 14-3 before the Hurricanes overcame handling issues and made inroads with direct running.
It was tied 17-17 at halftime and the Hurricanes hit the front early in the second half, despite being down to 14 men when Ngani Laumape was in the sin bin — but they were unable to hang on.
“We had to dig deep. We just had to hold the ball and be patient,” Crusaders captain Scott Barrett said. “Everyone in this competition is gunning for each other and there’s positions up for grabs in the finals — and the next few games are not going to get much easier.”
However, the hard-fought victory came at a cost, with All Blacks Josh Goodhue and Joe Moody, who was playing his centenary game for the Crusaders, leaving the field injured in the first quarter.
The Hurricanes had their moments when Ardie Savea and Dane Coles were on the field, despite losing a costly six lineouts, but when they were substituted in the second spell, the Crusaders woke up.
They had started strongly with Bridge’s two tries, before Laumape scored for the Hurricanes to start a flurry of points around the half-hour mark.
The Crusaders won a penalty from the restart, which Richie Mo’unga slotted only for his captain Barrett to spill the Hurricanes kick-off, which resulted in a try for Julian Savea.
While Laumape was in the sin bin for the first 10 minutes of the second half, the Hurricanes hit the front with a try for Wes Goosen, after Ardie Ardea wrong-footed the Crusaders by going down the blind side from a scrum.
Mo’unga and Jordie Barrett traded penalties to have the Hurricanes up 27-20, before Sevu Reece scored under the posts and Mo’unga’s conversion tied up the match.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier