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Written by the Dejected Fan in the Stand
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Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
The Fan in the Stand has experienced a few tough times since we returned to the top flight at the start of the decade. Larger provinces handed out thumpings with regularity in the early years but at least our expectations were low. There was a bad night in New Plymouth once but the pain of that was dulled as we held the Ranfurly Shield at the time.
In 2007 there was an awful night at Baypark when we were blanked by Southland and we were lucky to score zero. Fast forward a year and the same opposition and location conspired to embarrass the Bay in a quarter-final.
For most of the first half, Saturday night at North Harbour threatened to be worse than any of those occasions. When the third Harbour try was scored, it was head in hands time for the Fan, and a severe drubbing looked assured. While our semi-final hopes were going up in smoke, it said something for the character of the team that we didn’t collapse completely. In a triumph of looking on the bright side, we actually won the second half and played some great rugby in a random, nothing to lose sort of way.
You knew it was going to be a bad night when our Junior All Black prop was sidelined before the game and the half-back proclaimed “Iron Man” by this very newspaper limped off within minutes. Pretty soon we’d lost a winger and the replacement half-back so Nigel Hunt had to move from centre to wing and then to half-back. Hunt looked a natural as a former half-back should and he may find himself playing there for the rest of the season.
Rather than focus on the many, many areas of the game in which we struggled, the Fan would like to highlight the rare bright spots from the night.
• Superb support for the Bay at the sparsely populated North Harbour stadium.
• Culum Retallick once again was a trooper getting through a ton of work. Nothing flashy, just buried in the tight all day which may count against him at Chiefs selection time (ask Mark Sorenson).
• Mike Delany gave a masterclass in line-breaking with the fastest feet since Fred Astaire passed away.
• Toby Arnold was finally given the chance to run the ball back from full-back and showed that he should be given the 15 jersey for a long time.
• We will all be able to enjoy the final game against Taranaki without worrying about the semi-final permutations.
The Manawatu game has nothing riding on it so it will be a good chance for the Bay to play some good rugby and hopefully score some tries. Our main incentive is to beat a team favoured to be axed by the NZRU at season’s end, making us four from four after victories over Northland, Counties and Tasman.
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