From: <withheld>@yahoo.co.nz
To: info@harbourrugby.com
Subject: No more ...
Date: Sun, September 28, 2008 7:50pm

To whoever cares at all,

Since the new millenium I have attended every North Harbour home game when I have been in the country. Yesterday was the battle of the bridge. A game that in ages past has set the blood boiling of any Harbour fan, a game not to be missed... but I missed it... intentionally. You see, I've had enough and when I informed those closest to me that I wasn't going to North Harbour Stadium I promptly received pats of sympathy on the back with people saying things like "you're doing the right thing" or "they'll only hurt you again" even "they don't deserve you, don't go back to them." You see, people had seen what I've been going through with this team the last couple of years and they just haven't known how to approach me on the matter of "letting go."

The fact of the matter is that I still truely do love the Harbour team but it's no good for me any more. A guy can take only so much punishment before he does what's best for himself. I'll be back next year though, wearing our original, proper jersey (I hate the new strip) and supporting the team I love.

I'm glad that Pivac has gone but I'm miffed that Hollister and co waited until Pivac had made a complete shambles of our team until they chose to strongly suggest that he really shouldn't reapply. The guy is an arrogant, over rated dickhead that is hated by every player in that team and I'll be glad to never see his mug around these parts again.

What I will offer fans as a cop out is to perhaps support our North Harbour B team who are well placed to feature in semi finals and have only lost one game this season to the table topping Canterbury B's by 3 points. I waltzed along to Eden Park yesterday to watch the boys play the Scum B team and they absolutely rogered the scum 31-25 on their own back yard (the scum scored a couple of late tries to make it a flattering score on their part).This team showed up yesterday and showed complete confidence in what they were doing and every team member had some passion and mongrel. Heck even the team trainers and the physios could be heard verbally giving it to the Scum from where I was seated in the ASB stand.

The team is full of great club stalwarts such as Simon "Hammer" Hanlon, Marc Camburn, Roger Dustow (who captains the team) and Brett Ingham. There's also an exciting bunch of our youth in the team in Ben Botica, Pisi the even younger, Luke Hamilton and a dynamic young prop named Adrian Smith. Most of all it's great to see a management team of passionate Harbour faithful that are doing seriously good things with this squad. John Mckittrick, Blair Larsen and Frano Botica have instilled a lot of pride and confidence into this team from what I can see and it'd be awesome to see them given a go at the next level.

Check the B's out this week at I think Harbour Stadium or Albany Domain at 2.30 this Saturday (maybe you harbourrugby.com guys might know). You should see a bit out of these boys that you've been wanting to see from the ANZC team all year. Plus they wear the old strip too, maybe that's the secret behind their success...

Bring on 2009!

R.