The ACT Brumbies yesterday turned in an improved second-half performance to beat the Otago Highlanders 27-21 in Super Rugby Pacific for the third win of the season by an Australian team over New Zealand opponents.
The Brumbies trailed 11-7 after a frenetic first half, but took the lead for the first time in the 42nd minute with a try to winger Corey Toole, his fifth of the season.
The Highlanders regained the lead in the 58th minute with a try to Billy Harmon, but the Brumbies rallied to retake the lead with a penalty to Noah Lolesio then a match-winning try to replacement Lachlan Lonergan.
Photo: AFP
Lolesio kicked five goals from five attempts for 12 points as the Brumbies posted their first win in Dunedin in 13 years.
Sam Gilbert kicked an injury-time penalty to give the Highlanders a bonus point.
The Brumbies lost 46-12 to the Waikato Chiefs in Round 2 in the only previous match against a New Zealand team this season. They got their season back on track with a 22-19 win over the Western Force last weekend and reproduced the best aspects of the match in the second half yesterday.
Photo: AP
“We had a good look at ourselves after the Force game,” Brumbies captain Ryan Lonergan said. “We got a win last week, but we still weren’t happy with the physicality in our breakdown.”
“I think in the first 20 minutes here we were still a bit lazy in that area,” he said. “Then we started to muscle up and we started to play a bit of good footy.”
In other games yesterday, the Chiefs beat the Fijian Drua 46-29 and the Auckland Blues downed the NSW Waratahs 12-10.
Photo: AFP
On Friday, the Canterbury Crusaders’ start to the season went from poor to unprecedentedly bad with their fourth straight loss, a 14-10 home defeat by the Wellington Hurricanes.
The 11-time champions had not lost three matches in a row at the start of season since 1996 before they lost to the Fijian Drua last weekend.
They had never previously lost four matches in succession.
“We’re trying really hard but it’s just not sticking,” Crusaders captain David Havili said. “We gave ourselves a chance in the contest tonight, but we couldn’t quite finish it off.”
The Queensland Reds thumped the Melbourne Rebels 53-26 and Moana Pasifika downed the Force 22-14.
South Korean giants T1, led by “Faker,” won their fifth League of Legends (LoL) world championship crown in London on Saturday, beating China’s Bilibili Gaming (BLG) in a thrilling final. The teams were locked at 2-2 at a packed O2 arena, but T1 clinched game five to make it back-to-back titles after nearly four hours of tense action. China’s BLG started strongly, taking the first game before T1 struck back to level. The Chinese team pulled ahead again at 2-1 only for their opponents to hit back again and go on to take the decider. Faker, who won the Most
The Major League Baseball World Series trophy is headed to Los Angeles, but the party is extending all the way to Japan. People milled around local train stations yesterday morning in Tokyo as newspaper extras were ready to roll off the presses, proclaiming Japanese stars Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto as world champions along with their Dodgers teammates after a stirring Game 5 victory over the New York Yankees. The 30-year-old is a national hero in Japan whose face adorns billboards and TV adverts all over the country. Ohtani this year became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and
Amber Glenn overcame a fall and her own doubts to win a maiden Grand Prix figure skating title on Saturday at the Grand Prix de France. The American skater had the lead from Friday’s short program. That and the support of the crowd got her through a tough free skate in which she fell on a triple flip and put a hand onto the ice to steady herself on two other jumps. “I didn’t feel that great out there today, but I really tried, and the audience really got me through that last half when I was doubting myself,” Glenn
WORLD SERIES: ‘The individuals that were involved in that last night was a very small segment of the east Los Angeles community,’ the Los Angeles county sheriff said Rowdy crowds took to the streets of Los Angeles after the LA Dodgers won the Major League Baseball (MLB) World Series, setting a city bus on fire, breaking into stores and lighting fireworks. A dozen arrests were reported by police on Thursday, but officials said that most fans celebrated peacefully. Video showed revelers throwing objects at police in downtown LA as sirens blared and officers told them to leave the area on Wednesday night after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the MLB World Series at Giants Stadium in New York. Another video showed someone standing atop
RSS