North Harbour vs The Scum North Harbour Stadium, Albany 4:35pm, Sunday 7 August 2011
13	29
Try: I Finau Con: B Botica Pens: B Botica (2)	Tries: C Lowery, S Luatua, G Moala, G Anscombe Cons: G Anscombe (3) Pen: G Anscombe
Halftime: 13 - 8

When your team's balancing on the porcelain precipice, often a gentle zephyr is enough to push you over the edge, through the S-bend, and out to the poo-ponds of ignominy.

So it proved when, with the scores hanging pretty much in the balance and us launching our only impressive attack of the second half, Filo Pastry was penalized for leaving his feet in an attempt to clear quick ruck ball. Now, we've got no complaint with the ruling in itself. The law's there to stop guys from taking a flying leap at opposing players who are quite reasonably trying to get their hands on pill, but I've seen the same offence go unpunished about four hundred and ninety six times in the past three weeks, and it happened at least seven times in this game. We were rampant, we had numbers to burn out wide with Auks struggling to get back onside, and there's a 76% chance that we would've scored (allowing for our general incompetence).

I'm not saying we would've ultimately won. In fact, we probably wouldn't have, so awful were we in the second half. But it would've been nice to sit on that precipice just a little bit longer. Ninety seconds later, Gareth Anscombe had kicked the ball 70 yards down the park, they'd set up from a line-out, moved it wide, and scored after a few pick-and-goes. I felt like some poor cunt on Japanese death row, where they only tell crims two hours before their execution that they're about to meet their maker - not much scope for hope, in other words.

But please don't let me give you the impression that we were good in the first half. No, no, Mr Silly. We were shittier than a Bombay slum. We were only fortunate that the Scum had decided to bring their comedy hands, dropping everything they touched and running into each other like they were auditioning for a Benny Hill sketch.

Anyway, we responded to the dagger through the heart by bringing off as many of our good players as possible: Luamanu, Smylie, Parsons (though admittedly he was only good around the park - he was throwing big, juicy garbage pies into the lineouts), Afoa, and King. In Barry's defence, we did score our only try when in the first half King was in the blood bin and his promising replacement, Finau, dotted down. Finau turned out to be a bit of a shining light, though he's got to sort out his body position because better teams will teach him pretty soonish that entering mauls upright causes pain to one's personage and doesn't help the side go forward.

What's most concerning about all this is that following our first few games I'd initially surmised that the huge and numerous gaps in our defence that so many teams have been able to locate this season, might shore up when faced with a shit team. It would seem not. I swear that by every fourth phase possession, the Scum had mounted a two or three-man overlap out wide. How is this happening? Will something be done about it? Where the fuck are Mulder and Scully when we need them?