"This issue of 'Super-12-As-New-Rugby-God' bores the shit out of me, frankly.

When the Super 10 first came along, I thought it was a bloody marvellous idea; the top four NPC sides up against a couple from Australia and a few Japies - belter! Particularly in light of the fact that we were bloody good back then and, were it not for Lucky Burton missing a customary sitter against Queensland, we might even have nabbed ourselves a title.

The Super 12 moved the goalposts a bit and threw up an interesting mix of NPC sides in the supposed 'national interest'. Now whilst teams like the Blues (initially) and the Crusaders (more recently) have been able to succeed - mainly due to a good bunch of players from their core provincial sides - sides like ourselves, The Skunk Brothers of Northland, The in-breeders of Southland, and even the Bull-Buggerers of the 'Naki have been shafted up the arse, because these big franchises are now run not by all the contributing rugby unions equally, but by the Big Guys (The Scum and the Sheep-Shaggers) for their own selfish means.

Now I'm going to narrow it down further; I don't actually hold anything against the Sheep-Shaggers - in fact, I try to hold my anatomy as far as is humanly possible away from their ilk - because the other sides in their franchise are wee grass-roots fellas who wouldn't expect it to be any other way. Same goes for Otago. The Scum, however, are bordered by two unions who: a) are about on a par with them in terms of skill and ability and b) hate them with more passion than could ever be feasibly conveyed. And that's what gets on my tits the most: apathetic North Harbour Part-Time Fans who wear Blues caps and think that it's "more logical for us to be with Auckland because of the geography and culture we share."

Well listen up, losers!

When we were in The Chiefs we had more bloody players getting national exposure than we ever have/will with The Scum and I don't ever recall facing the very real possibility of losing one of our best players (Cribby) to the other end of the country when we were with the Cow-Pokers. Sure, we lost matches quite often. Sure, the Cow-Pokers are a bunch of Neanderthals not-of-woman-born. Sure the combined I.Q of a sold-out Rugby Park will never match the figures on the scoreboard at the start of a game. But at least I actually cared whether we won or lost. At least I could refer to the team as "ours".

We at harbourrugby.com say:

To the Super 12; get to arse. In the words of that pint-sized, African-American songstress, Janet Jackson: "What have you done for me lately?"

To the NPC; long may you live. Thank you for providing us with the identity for which we battled so long and so hard, and which we finally achieved back in the 80s.

And to The Scum; get stuffed. You'll never have our true support; we shall forever support two teams: Harbour, and whoever is playing against you."