North Harbour vs Manawatu FMG Stadium, Palmerston North 8:05pm, Tuesday 2 August 2011
21	32
Tries: D Raikuna, W Walker Con: B Botica Pens: W Walker (3)	Tries: N Milner-Skudder, T Cama, A Smith, A Cruden Cons: A Cruden (3) Pen: A Cruden Drop Goal: T Cama
Halftime: 14 - 8

In a week of headlines like 'Kiwi Woman's Hand Severed in Croatian Sex Romp', and 'Public Masturbator Never Got Counselling - Lawyer', 'Auckland Man Decapitated Testing Hovercraft' (what is this, 1971?), another demoralizing loss is almost cause for a hefty sigh of relief that Armageddon is not upon us and that things are back on track.

Sadly for us, that track appears to be one-way, unsealed, gradually narrowing bottleneck to fiery perdition.

I was driving for much of the game, so I ear-witnessed it from the cosy confines of the old Ford. This is a practice I advise against because when things are going well one tends to lose focus and when things are going badly one tends to focus more intently on things like concrete pylons holding up overbridges, oncoming articulated lorries, and joggers. Suffice to say I was more often focused than not during a commentary from local Manawatu radio 'personalities' that consisted of gems like these:

"There are Raukunas, Rakunas, Ravulos, Luamanus, Filos, and Paulos out there."
"There are a couple of Smiths out there, too, yuk, yuk, yuk, fetch ma gun, Cletus."

Yes, well done Manawatu, we have Polynesians in New Zealand and they like to play rugby. Well spotted. I do so like how they can run and throw spears, don't you?

The second-most annoying facet of this game was that we were shit in the first half but actually managed not to leak like a sieve. By some miracle, we went in at the break ahead. According to the radio guys, "Raikuna made a great break there for Nafi Tuitavake", presumably because anyone who's not white is quite difficult to tell apart from other non-whites, but it sounded like a good try and we defended reasonably well. Then we went to sleep for about nine minutes and woke up to find ourselves behind. Willie Walker took his opportunity to evoke ghosts of Silao Laega and Tusi Pisi past, to miss a simple penalty, before we woke up and the same man scored a two point try (if we minus from five the three easy points that he missed). Hope had returned.

Hope then stumbled like a f*cking lush straight out of the stadium to heave his ugly guts all over the street and leave us utterly point-less yet again. What the f*ck? From what I can gather, the forwards sounded like they were doing okay. Big Afeaki - apparently 'Big' is his real first name now because everyone calls him that - was given ups by the commentary team. Woodcock was similarly praised, although not for what might have been the first kick he's ever executed as a professional. 'Executed' by electric chair, lethal injection, and a club to the head, by the sounds of it. And top try-scorer Luamanu got wraps. Does this mean that our backs really can't tackle or is there some elementary strategic flaw in our game pattern that every other team's coach has identified?

The best thing about all this is that the Scum are up next and looking just as awful. We could take them apart and win 67-59.

I feel sorry for the girl who severed her hand. She seems like a popular, outgoing lass, and I'd like to meet her to offer some digit therapy. And I agree with the public masturbator's lawyer. Clearly there needs to be some kind of support group for communal turkey stranglers. I'd suggest a non-judgemental environment where they can share their problems, drink some milky tea, and eat some soggy biscuits.