Watching Harbour at present is a bit like casual viewing of a 1980’s American daytime soap-opera…lifeless and without an ounce of talent or discernable skill. The traffic getting to the Stadium was challenging but once you got past the entry to the new mall it was plain sailing. New, flashy consumables won the race for people’s hearts and wallets and in my estimation will continue to do so for some considerable period of time if the rugby is anything to go by.

Quite frankly we are playing a brand of rugby that made everyone hate England in the nineties, boring, error-ridden and without passion. The only saving grace was that our visitors were seriously inept, otherwise we would have been soundly beaten.

Pivac obviously took our advice and played a genuine number 10 at fly-half in “Wee” Jack McPhee, Pisi was shifted to second-five and the backline looked a little more settled. Pisi summed up his illustrious career early in the first 40 minutes by missing a drop-goal out in front with no pressure, the sooner this waste of space gets to France the better. Pity we had to later revert back to the status quo as it showed signs of real promise.

The first half saw us get 13 points and entertain Manawatu by allowing them an easy 11. If they had had a kicker who knew the way to the goal-posts it could have been a lot more – but it wasn’t.

Special mention needs to be made of Hinchco who will now be the target when Tusi departs for the European continent. If this guy is the best hooker in the union we might as well close the stadium and put an end to meaningful club rugby. This guy is just genuinely bad, bad Leroy Brown, the worst f@#king hooker in rugby town. If there was a statistic for net metres lost by a player, then he would win it every time. Knock-on’s, lost throws, floating out on the wings, you name it he did it. As my companion yesterday mentioned (yes there were two of us), Dustow must have really pissed-off Pivac to only come on with around 10 to go. Makes you wonder…

The second-half was a little better and saw us pull away to what was a comfortable win. George Pisi was a rock in defence and scored a well-worked try. McPhee who I thought was a little off his game redeemed himself well and came away with a tidy 19 point haul.

Now we are on the road with Wellington and Otago in our sights. We may not win a game again this season folks, can’t see it happening away and the BOP and Southland will be more than ready for us in the “House that Fans Forgot”. We can only hope that a boisterous 2000 people will put the opposition off their game, unless of course they bring that amount themselves which is more than a remote possibility.

Summary:

We are playing a style of rugby which does not suit us, will never suit us and shouldn’t suit us. Harbour have no game-plan and structure and quite frankly I expected a bit better from the coaching staff in 2007. The players also have to take some responsibility but they seem somewhat bored and spineless.

We discussed last week about how the psyche of Harbour rugby may have been damaged and our brand diminished. Sunday afternoon was further proof of this in my mind. North Harbour rugby used to mean a genuine chance of victory against the odds, a half decent forward pack and backs who could really get the heart racing. At present we have a team of club players and with the exception of Tuitavake, not a stand-out, class player.

Nucifora and the Blues won’t be touching our lads and for once I can’t blame them.