At last it is the time to find the Bay colours and trot off to watch some live rugby. Real rugby that is, none of that "Super 14", "Mediocre Chiefs", "Franchise" rubbish. This Friday night, the Blue Chip Bay of Plenty Steamers plays Hawkes Bay at Blue Chip Stadium (have to keep the sponsors happy you know) in their penultimate pre-season friendly. While the rest of the teams kick off for real the weekend after, ourselves and Waikato get to have a bye and yet another pre-season friendly over in Hamilton.

This season, we can only look at our first 6 fixtures - after this first stage, we will either be battling with the top provinces for a home quarter-final or wrestling with the dead men to scrape into an away quarter-final. Either way we get a minimum of 9 fixtures but as yet we don't know the opponents or location for the final 3 games.

We start the Air NZ Cup with another trip to the Cake Tin for a Friday night game. We then come home to play Harbour at the Mount, we go up to Eden Park, play Manawatu in Rotorua, fly south to take on Tasman and finish off with the Naki at Baypark.

We need to make the top 3 to be sure of a quarter-final spot and if we can presume that Wellington and Auckland will go well, the 2 home games against Harbour and the Naki will decide our fate. We should trounce Manawatu and there is a potential banana skin away to Tasman who have showed good pre-season form. 

The chances of a Shield challenge this season rest with making the top 3 - Canterbury should hold it through the opening round-robin so if we make the top 3 we will play them, but as yet we have no idea where the game will be played.

See you all at Baypark on Friday night - under cover, under lights!