Colloquially known as the Battle of the Bays, today's match is the real deal. As anyone who grew up playing their brothers in backyard footy knows well, the closer the adversary the more bitter the battle.
It's why this game is a marketer's dream. To boot (no pun intended), this year it comes with the added allure of dangling the Ranfurly Shield within the Steamers' reach.
The Battle of the Bays smacks of a naval battle on high seas with a battery of powdery cannons. It's an appropriate picture, given Captain Cook named the two Bays; one because of its appreciable abundance, the other after the captain's boyhood hero, Admiral Sir Edward Hawke.
The literal Bays are most distinct. Ours, naturally, is a true bay: a beautiful half-moon coast that extends for 100 kilometres from Mahia Peninsula to Cape Kidnappers.
By way of contrast, a map of the "Bay" of Plenty's coastline (stretching 259km from Coromandel Peninsula in the west to Cape Runaway in the east) reveals little more than a large indentation.
Suffice to say, when the fabled Maui and his brothers fished up the North Island, they did a better job of filleting the contours of Hawke's Bay.
There, I've subscribed to the marketing like the perfect rugby consumer. I'm happy to consciously perpetuate parochialism. That's where the fun's at.
While yesterday's East Coast tsunami warning precluded the possibility of a sea-based Battle of the Bays, don't rule out a few spectacular broadsides at McLean Park today.
It's sibling rivalry at its best. C'mon the (real) Bay.
