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MAFIA TEES
Just $20 a shirt, a steal!
Not often you steal from the Mafia and live to tell the tale...
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Written by Slightly Gloating Fan in the Stand
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Thursday, 28 August 2008 |
This week, the Fan has been looking at the Air New Zealand Cup ladder - every couple of hours in fact.
It pleases me in a couple of ways. The Bay is four from four and tucked in behind Wellington. Waikato is the only side without a win. Does it get any better?
Anyone who has been to Okara Park in Whangarei will know it is a rather forlorn, unloved place that is sparsely populated on a Northland match day. It does have a certain charm to it, mainly for the hardy souls who attend every game that are worthy of admiration given Northland's form in the decade to date.
I wonder what the real Northland fans thought of the extra 10,000 who crammed in for the Bay game, purely because Northland is threatened with demotion. Maybe if they had been attending games during the hard times, it would not have come to this.
It certainly was an intimidating atmosphere for the Bay to run into and for the first 20 minutes, you could sense the lift that it gave the Northland players.
But again, our set-pieces were strong and this enabled us to weather the storm and start to dominate the game.
The final 10 minutes of the match had all the tension not seen since 2004 amid our heroic Shield victories.
While always fearful of a mistake, this Bay side is starting to give the Fan confidence on defence and some of the defensive hits were mightily impressive.
The pinnacle of course was Delany's tackle on Vainikolo, a game-saver if ever there was one. Vainikolo has been running around and through tacklers for the past year so Delany must have been delighted to bring his Highlanders team mate to the turf.
We now enter the tough part of the season, four Super franchise bases in a row starting with the leaders Wellington at the Caketin.
The Bay has been guilty of squandering chances and the first half against Northland should have seen us into a decisive lead. Domination of possession and territory does not lead automatically to points with the new ELVs.
As Southland showed in the first half, Wellington is a tough side to break down and this weekend we have to take all our chances.
Finally, it is time to continue selecting the Chiefs side for 2009 as a favour to Mr Foster (as I hear he won't be in the country for a while).
Mike Delany must be in the Chiefs squad so that he doesn't have to trek down to Dunedin again. Another season down south and he might be stolen by Otago.
Stephen Donald can be the back-up first-five in the squad - freeing up Callum Bruce to return to the Highlanders.
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Buy "If Only No More" |
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Steamers 2009 |
| : Air New Zealand Cup |
| Position: 7 |
| 31 July: Northland, W 19-14 |
| 9 Aug: Counties, W 32-9 |
| 15 Aug: Wellington, W 21-17 |
| 22 Aug: Waikato, W 32-16 |
| 30 Aug: Auckland, L 14-29 |
| 5 Sep: Canterbury, W 19-17 |
| 11 Sep: Southland, L 12-19 |
| 17 Sep: Tasman, W 24-13 |
| 26 Sep: Otago, L 17-26 |
| 2 Oct: Hawke's Bay, L 19-22 |
| 10 Oct: Harbour, L 7-28 |
| 16 Oct: Manawatu, W 28-27 |
| 25 Oct: Taranaki, L 24-30 |
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