It was always going to be a crowd-puller. For more than 20 years we've waited for this moment - a Ranfurly Shield defence - and sure enough the masses flocked through the turnstiles in such huge numbers that kick-off had to be delayed by 20 minutes to accommodate them. I arrived half an hour before the scheduled start, and had to endure a queue of hundreds for chips and a beer; there were regular announcements over the tannoy for parents to collect their lost children; three people needed medical assistance having passed out from lack of oxygen. If this is what it's like in 'Shield Country' against Thames Valley, we await the madness that will unfold when the armies of the 'Naki, or the Mooloos come to town. All of which is, of course, horse-shit.

Most horse-shitty of all is this 'Shield Country' moniker. We're one of the five biggest cities in New Zealand. Trying to capture the demented-provincial-loyalty element won't work here because most people have better things to do on a wet and windy Saturday night. 'Shield City' is slightly more accurate, 'City With The Shield' still more, and 'City With The Shield But We Might Just Prefer To Go To The Theatre / Go To A Nightclub / Drag-Race Our Modified Legacies And Read About The Game In The Morning Paper' should be the slogan. Then, in true Harbour fashion, we could employ a couple of chisel-chinned salaried workers in a marketing capacity, give them a waterfront apartment and a year's supply of nose-candy, and watch them snort our already scant finances all the way to court.

If you'd missed the game and switched on the radio for after-match comment you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Swamp Foxes had won, such was the diatribe of verbal masturbation from commentators so nauseatingly condescending that all self-respecting Valley fans should by now be penning missives of hate to them. They didn't win because we trounced them. They barely ventured into our half in the first 40 minutes, by which time we'd racked up a half-ton and had one eye on the bar. Granted, for a fair stretch in the second half, they kept us scoreless - and we made their scrum look suspiciously good despite monstering it in the first spell. Their wee right-wing was a gutsy chap, too: respect that man. However, as a game, it gave us little indication of the weeks ahead. What indication I did manage to glean was that Tusi, like many players who go to Canterbury, picked up a new skill. On this occasion the skill appears to have been leathering the ball aimlessly down the middle of the park with no obvious motive. Based on the evidence of last night's test, he and Dan Carter have been in deep and profound discussions about kicking and both appear to have arrived at the decision that it doesn't really matter too much in the greater scheme of things. The new fella at 2nd 5/8ths got through the game well enough, although I have early suspicions of his goal-kicking range. Pisi the Younger was very good again, whilst wings Lawrence and Pisi the Even Younger played well without ever having to defend. We didn't lose a line-out either.

Suspiciously, there were too many Waikato fans in the crowd. I hope our Union will see fit to ban those cow-bells when the degenerate masses arrive in our town, because they could most certainly be used as projectiles or weapons, particularly when stuffed violently into the rectal passages of their owners.