On Friday night, the Steamers started their pre-season campaign with a win, beating Manawatu 27-18 at a very wet Whakatane. According to an anonymous attendee :-

"It wasn't that flash a game with The Bay never really dominating any part of it....Most of the scrums either screwed/collapsed/reset or resulted in a penalty...The lineouts weren't that flash again...The backs looked good at times but very average at others.

It rained virtually all game so it was never going to be a game for sparkling ball play or open rugby so there was plenty of "ball shovelling" and runs close to the rucks. Williams kicked well and several backs had telling runs (Aporo ran 80 metres...jinking, fending and swerving for his try)

Twas pretty hard to judge how good Manawatu were but they tried to run the ball wide and for large parts of the game had a territorial and possessional advantage.

It will be interesting to see how The Bay go in better conditions and against a better team."

Bay of Plenty Steamers 27 (Murray Williams, Cory Aporo, Simms Davison, Culum Retallick tries; Williams 2con, 1pen) Manawatu Turbos 18 (Lisiate Fa'aoso, Andre Taylor, Matty James tries; Graham Smith pen) HT 15-8. Match report from BOP Times