Bulls into Bartercard Cup G.F.

The Canterbury Bulls have booked a spot in the Bartercard Cup grand final next Monday night.

The Bulls thumped the Tamaki Leopards 30-6 in the sudden death semi-final at Auckland?s Mt Smart Stadium last night.

The Phil Prescott-coached side will now face Brian McClennan?s Auckland Lions side in a rematch of last season?s grand final.

The Leopards started the game at full pace and enjoyed plenty of possession.

But it was the Bulls who collected the first points of the game.

After weathering the early storm they exploited a few holes in the Tamaki defence to send centre Lee Fidow in for the opening try in the 17th minute.

In a sign of the standard of the defence from both sides the next points didn?t come until the 30th minute when Canterbury second rower Jonny Limmer crashed his way over.

With the Bulls on a roll the Leopards needed to show some composure.

Instead they gifted possession back to Canterbury with a simple handling mistake and it cost them dearly.

Their defence looked weak and it wasn?t long before Donovan Aitken found his way through to add another four points to the Bulls? advantage.

With Scott Hurrell on target with the boot the Bulls held a 16-0 lead at halftime.

Whatever coach Dean Clark said to the Leopards at halftime obviously worked.

They came back from the break and again applied plenty of pressure to the Bulls.

And it paid off in the 56th minute when Paul Atkins burrowed his way through the Canterbury defence to grab their first points of the game.

William Heta collected the extras to reduce the gap to 16-6.

That sparked the Leopards into action.

But it was only a brief fight-back and with a little over 10 minutes to run on the clock the Bulls added another nail in the coffin when winger Lucas Tamakaha shot over the try line.

Hurrell again made easy work of the conversion and then added a penalty to extend the lead to 18 points and put the game out of reach of the Tamaki side.

In a show of their ruthless professionalism Canterbury continued to pound the Leopards defence in the dying minutes and added another try to interchange player Ross Turi to their final score.



Canterbury Bulls 30
Tries: L. Fidow, J. Limmer, D. Aitken, L. Tamakaha, R. Turi
Goals: S. Hurrell (5)


Tamaki Leopards 6
Tries: P Atkins
Goals: W. Heta

Halftime Score: 16 - 0 To Canterbury Bulls