To those who have missed the events of the past week - events that culminated in farce on Friday night at the Stadium of Echoes - what I am about to tell you will shock you. Or it would if it had happened to any of the Super 12 franchise bases, but because it happened to one of the five non-franchise teams, you probably will just go 'Oh, that sucks. What time's the next AB's game?'

First, there was the appeal by the Wellington RFU to the Wellingtonian-comprised NZRFU, which was always going to result in our losing four points. The recourse for appeal was set when the presumably Wellingtonian lawyer handed down his decision in the week prior that led to us getting a fine. I have not read his report and if I did I probably wouldn't understand it anyway, but that's hardly going to stop me from saying it's shit. (Uninformed opinions about things we don't understand are the basis of a healthy, functioning democracy. So, thankfully, is sinking piss. I like to drink.) What is apparent is that nothing he wrote was precedent-setting. In simple terms (because my knowledge of the law extends only as far as a basic understanding of the Police Diversion Scheme - it wasn't my fault, my pants fell down) a gap as wide as a Shore girl's legs was left for the Wellington RFU to pound and thump and grind and pump home its appeal. Which it did. And lost, but not before managing to have our points deducted. So, many congratulations to Wellington for the most limp-dick act of self-abasement in the short history of the NPC. Will lawyers be the new stars? Perhaps Mike Bungay will become the latest hot property winger? Or maybe Chief Justice Smellie will be drafted into the middle row as teams start shitting their jockstraps when the Lions hit town with their expert legal team and average rugby side. One good thing to come of it all is to highlight just how inept our management is. Someone fucked up and I'll bet four championship points that fat Doug and his drunken sidekicks will be fanning - with about five thousand complimentary season tickets, I imagine - the stench of blame out of their plush lounges. "It's no-one's fault." Actually, you're fucking wrong. Unless you've changed your name to No-one. You sure haven't changed your work to good.

Anyway, onto the bad news. We got to the ground and one of our number was told that he couldn't take his air horn in. At least I think that's what the security man said…I couldn't hear him too well over the raucous din of the two thousand stainless steel cowbells that managed to passed through the gates unchallenged. (For more evidence of abysmal North Harbour planning, see the match report for the game against Otago, 2002, and the Wellington report of 2000.) If you must choose the kiddy-fiddling Harbour Master as your inane mascot, then doesn't it make sense to extend the idea by allowing nautical air-horns for the home fans? Mind you, when you can't get a piece of paper signed to make your players eligible, I guess everything else must seem like quantum physics. We shouldn't have led at half-time, but we did. Our forwards were taking a hammering, but Waikato are the most boring team in the division so were unable to do anything of any interest at all except kick penalties and give it to their deceptively slow Fijian winger (who admittedly did have what Holmes might call a cheeky sidestep).

Then they closed the beer tent. Supposedly this was so the crowd would not get excited or have too much fun.

To wrap it all up, we suffered the most incredibly woeful refereeing decision of the season to lose us the game. Flavell went through a small Waikato maul from an on-side position; some high-foreheaded broad-jaw got angry, either because he realised that the maul was too loose or because it had just occurred to him for the first time in twenty-odd years that his mother was also his sister. He pushed Flavell. Flavell pushed him back. The touch-judge came on and told the sexually-retarded, syphilitically-blinded referee that Flavell had punched someone. Flavell was binned. We lost our momentum. Here's the Herald's Chris Rattue - and when the Herald sticks up for us, you know the world's due for Deep Impact: 'Referee Kevin Rowe sent Flavell to the sinbin on a touch judge's report, with Flavell alleged to have thrown punches that didn't exist.' We probably did just enough to lose this but showed that we are infinitely more exciting to watch. Our backs' handling in wet ground conditions was poetry and every time Waikato got the ball there was a perceptible groan from the crowd as they contemplated another four minutes of driving mauls resulting in fuck-all. Without beer. It's a bit easier to understand why people from the Waikato turn to their immediate families for unnatural comforts when they have to watch that unmitigated cod-shit week-in, week-out.

Have a happy summer.

P.S. There is no such word as syphilitically, but I think you'll agree it's quite good.