Pride will be a strong motivating factor for Wairarapa-Bush and Horowhenua-Kapiti when the sides meet in a Heartland rugby championship match at Carterton on Saturday.
Whoever loses here will probably wind up as wooden-spooners, hardly a situation either could have anticipated when they kicked off their 2011 campaigns.
As things stand, Wairarapa-Bush have gone six Heartland games without success and have only three bonus points to show for their efforts.
That leaves them dead last on the points table.
Horowhenua-Kapiti have had one win - 24-20 over South Canterbury in their opening match - and are sitting in second-last spot on five points.
Both teams will enter Saturday's game knowing that the prospects of their coming away with any points from the final series of pool games on September 24 are slim at best.
That day, Wairarapa-Bush will play one of the competition high-flyers, Wanganui, at Wanganui and will start rank outsiders there.
Horowhenua-Kapiti should have an easier task against East Coast at Otaki but with the Coasters still in the running for the Meads Cup semis you'd have to fancy them scoring by a comfortable margin.
Wairarapa-Bush head coach Mark Rutene agrees his team's positioning on the points table should be a huge incentive for his players to come up with a bold effort this weekend.
"Obviously nobody wants to be remembered as the wooden-spooners, we're all focused on avoiding that," Rutene said.
"We're desperate for a win and this is the big chance."
While he and assistant coach Steve Thompson won't finalise their starting XV until nearer the weekend, Rutene doesn't imagine many - if any - changes being made to the line-up that took the field in the 23-21 loss to Poverty Bay last Saturday.
Rutene was pleased with the commitment shown in that match by the Wairarapa-Bush squad and is confident if they can reproduce that against Horowhenua-Kapiti they should come out on the right side of the ledger.
"We got stuck in from the word go and that's what has to happen again," he said.
