Table:
| Pos. | Team | P | W | B | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wellington | 6 | 6 | 6 | 30 |
| 2 | Hawke's Bay | 6 | 5 | 7 | 27 |
| 3 | Tasman | 5 | 5 | 3 | 23 |
| 4 | BoP | 6 | 4 | 6 | 22 |
| 5 | Taranaki | 5 | 4 | 4 | 20 |
| 6 | Waikato | 6 | 3 | 5 | 17 |
| 7 | Canterbury | 6 | 3 | 3 | 15 |
| 8 | Otago | 6 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| 9 | Counties-Manukau | 6 | 2 | 4 | 12 |
| 10 | North Harbour | 5 | 1 | 7 | 11 |
| 11 | Southland | 5 | 2 | 7 | 11 |
| 12 | Auckland | 5 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| 13 | Northland | 6 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| 14 | Manawatū | 5 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
Fixtures:
13/09:
- Southland v Canterbury
14/09:
- BoP v Taranaki
- North Harbour v Manawatū
- Waikato v Hawke's Bay
15/09:
- Counties-Manukau v Otago
- Tasman v Wellington
- Northland v Auckland
18/09:
- Manawatū v Southland
Predictions: Canterbury 9- BoP 5+ North Harbour 25+ Hawke's Bay 5- Otago 5- Wellington 3+ Auckland 9- Southland 5-
Notes: Well, after the absolute tragedy that befell Hawke's Bay in their Shield defense against the Mako, i'm hoping Wellington will visit Nelson and at least ensure that Tasman only get to celebrate for a week.
That should be a hell of a game with all of the squad ABs being released to play for their provinces and Wellington have been very good so far this season.
Last weekend saw a lot of movement in the bottom half of the table - with lots of drama as well. See if you can find clip of wet-ball-gate from the Battle of the Bridge. Absolute dastardly shithousery robbed North Harbour.
There's plenty of other good matches ahead this weekend too - BoP v Taranaki should settle who's in 4th place, and the mid-week home game for the Turbos could be their only chance of picking up a win this season.
I'm glad the tests are over for this weekend, hopefully the rugby pundits down here will pay some attention to the NPC in their shows. But likely it'll get a passing mention while they spend 45 minutes talking up the Wobblies and then at the end of the season they'll have another moan about how nobody cares about the NPC.
Well, double tragedy for me. In the wet on Saturday night and with Fakatava going out with an injury pre-game the Magpies got absolutely punished by Waikato. Nothing went right for them, and pretty much everything went right for the Mooloos.
Then that got compounded by those heathens Tasman managing to win their first Shield defence after taking it off us last weekend.