North Harbour vs Otago North Harbour Stadium, Albany 7:35pm, Thursday 19 August 2010
35	23
Tries: M Ravulo (2) Cons: B Botica, L McAlister Pens: B Botica (5), L McAlister	Tries: H Aulika, J Hill Cons: G Dickson (2) Pens: G Dickson (3)
Halftime: 9 - 23

We arrived at the stadium to packed stands, hordes of screaming supporters, flags waving, and lots of attractive young women. Then the High Schools final between Rosmini and Westlake 'College' (according to the ground announcer) ended, the place emptied, and normal service was resumed - right down to the humiliating, bumbling show of excrement of which Harbour and Otago are so capable.

The first half was so abysmal a display of rugby by two desperate teams, that I seeked solace in Lindsay Knight's new book on Harbour's first 25 years in order to remind myself - as is the fashion of old men who were never much good at the game themselves - that the old days really were so much better. As I sat drinking too quickly and in unreasonable amounts beer synonymous with our opponents - and which men in urban centres have adopted as their own because their sperm counts have plummeted and the closest they come to masculinity any more is some distant, ancestral affiliation to number 8 wire and the land that they don't work any more - Otago's fullback and winger danced down the far touchline with the only display of something approximating skill in the entire first forty minutes. So I transported myself via the power of reading back to the bank at Onewa to drink cans of Lion Red and watch Bunce, Little, and Ozzy destroy Canterbury in the '94 semi.

Dowd and Wilson are determined to try and bring some of that nostalgia back through allowing fans on the pitch, re-instating blazers, and selecting from the region (after the fashion of Thorburn) and unlike some of this website's other correspondents, I admire the culture that they're bringing to the side. One thing that does seem to be working is their attempt to instill some grit into their players. The losses to Auckland and Canterbury were big, but not unexpected; the true test of this side is how well we can foot it in games against similar unions, and we've now won two from two in those games. Twice now at halftime, Dowd has obviously found the right things to say, and the team has found the ticker to front up. We didn't see Ravulo much in the first half, but I saw him plenty in the second. Chamberlain was dropped for the first 40 of this match following a couple of poor showings, then came out in the second half to share some of his pain with his opposites and recapture his form. Botica spent much of the first half turning the ball over and getting isolated, but knocked over a lot of tricky penalties that he wouldn't have last year - a measure of the lad's growing ability to set past mistakes aside to focus on more immediate concerns. Parsons gets our MVP nod for two points, but all the front rowers in that second half were hungry and aggressive.

A serious match report for a serious win.