Foe and Dalzell Billy Wallace Best & Fairest competition frontrunners
Poneke’s Greg Foe and the Wellington Axemen’s Alex Dalzell are the Billy Wallace competition Best & Fairest pacesetters after the opening five rounds of the Swindale Shield season.
Both have been in top form for their sides so far in 2018. Poneke loose forward Greg Foe broke his arm at the tail-end of last club season, ruling him out of contention for the Wellington Lions. But he has put any frustration from that behind him to be the competition leader on 10 points.
Foe earned his first point in the competition in his side’s opening 10-55 defeat to Old Boys University, and since then has been part of Poneke’s turnaround and has had three consecutive Player of the Match performances in recent weeks. He was awarded 3 points in each of Poneke’s last three wins over Tawa (25-20), Northern United (40-35) and Wellington (53-13).
Wellington captain and lock-blindside flanker Dalzell is second on 8 points, having been awarded the maximum 3 points twice, in the opening round 23-5 win over Johnsonville and in the round four 15-69 defeat to Hutt Old Boys Marist.
Wainuiomata fullback and goal-kicker Justin Wilson and Marist St Pat’s centre Billy Proctor are joint second on 6 points, having collected Player of the Match points twice each.
A group of five players are on 5 points through as many rounds, including Trent Renata (Ories), Logan Blake (Avalon), Jonathan Fuimoano (OBU), Chase Tiatia (HOBM), Chris Aumua (Avalon) and Whetu Henry (Ories).
Kalim Kelemete (Tawa), Tupou Sopoaga (Petone) and Tai Neli (OBU) are three players on 4 points, while a further 22 players are on 3 – 15 of whom have had one Player of the Match performance each.
In total, 81 players have received points in the first 5 rounds of the 2018 season.
This year’s selectors are the match referees (previously Dominion Post writers) and the competition will continue into the second round in both the Jubilee and Hardham Cup rounds. The last few seasons have just included Swindale Shield and Jubilee Cup performances.
The Billy Wallace Best and Fairest competition has been running continuously in Wellington club rugby since 1966. The first winner was then All Blacks flanker Tom Lister of the now defunct Athletic club. Last year the competition was jointly won by Tawa’s Hemi Fermanis and Wainuiomata’s Ben Tupuola, a previous winner.
Updates are expected every few weeks throughout the Swindale Shield and then weekly during the second round.
