For 40 minutes the Bay of Plenty Steamers survived on heart and hope.

Unfortunately the toll of conceding massive territory and possession advantages in their opening Air New Zealand Cup match against Canterbury proved too much as the home side scored 31 unanswered points in the second half at Jade Stadium.

They took advantage of a wilting Bay side who had given everything on defence but failed to fire completely at set piece and subsequently offered little on attack.

With a dearth of quality ball, Bay's role was reduced to that of desperate defenders, with No6 Warren Lippi-Smith a solid contributor in the loose alongside Tanerau Latimer, Solomon King and Colin Bourke.

Early in the second half, Lippi-Smith pulled off a superb covering tackle on Canterbury's Stephen Brett, rolling the potential superstar in a desperate grappling move which was deemed a non-try by Bay of Plenty supporters and officials alike.

"You just try and do whatever you can to stop them putting that ball down, luckily enough I had some backup and managed to get him up."

Unfortunately the desperation was wasted with Scott Hamilton finding a hole within a few phases and celebrating his 50th game for Canterbury with the opening try.

"That's something we need to work on, if we stop someone like that we need to get out of there _ there was a lot of good stuff but we've still got a lot of work to do.

"We're disappointed, we wanted a win, we wanted four points. To get none is a kick in the guts and we want to rectify that next week."

The Steamers now prepare to host Auckland in Tauranga on Friday night.

The red and blacks couldn't find any decent film footage of the Bay last week so rather than focus in on their opposition, they did the opposite, according to almost-Steamer Steven Yates.

"The video clips we had of the Bay weren't really up to scratch at all so we flagged them and worked on our game, made sure we focused on what we were going to do and not worry about them too much," said the New Zealand sevens representative, who had informal talks with Bay of Plenty earlier this year.

"It didn't really get anywhere, I was up there [Bay of Plenty] at sevens camp and they approached me _ Gordon Tietjens is a good Bay of Plenty bloke and he knew I liked it up there but it didn't really get any further than that."

It was one of four five-pointers from the home side, who absorbed the Bay's early efforts and gradually pulled their way through to a bonus point win which looked unlikely when they were locked 3-3 at halftime.

Canterbury first-five Stephen Brett, swathed in bandages after getting cut by a team-mate's rogue boot, orchestrated most of the play.

Murray Williams provided the Bay's only points with a sweet 38m penalty in the fourth minute.

For long periods Bay of Plenty relied on their D game _ defence.

But tackling at the rate of two to one against a Super 14 home base side is not the way to win Air NZ Cup games. And so it showed as Canterbury chipped away for some 60 minutes before delivering the defining head shots.

The final insult came in injury time after the Bay lost the ball after an attacking scrum and Canterbury's Hamish Gard scored.