Race for NPC semis wide open

1.00pm

It's deja vu for the Waikato rugby team, who have two games left to play in the NPC first division round robin.

This time last year Waikato were coming off an upset loss to Southland and were faced with having to win their last two matches to reach the semifinals.

They then beat Bay of Plenty at home with a bonus point and North Harbour away to qualify second to host a semifinal they subsequently lost to Wellington.

At the same stage this season Waikato have the same win-loss record (4-3) but one more point (five bonus points as opposed to four) than they did last year, although the leaders also have more points than then.

Waikato host second placed North Harbour, who have four wins, a draw and two losses, at Waikato Stadium on Sunday and the following weekend travel to New Plymouth for a Saturday afternoon match against Taranaki, currently third.

They can finish with a maximum of 31 points with two bonus-point wins. That is two more points than they got last year and just one less than 2003 top qualifiers Otago.

Wellington look certain to claim a home semifinal. They currently lead with 26 points and finish with matches against the bottom two teams on the table, Northland and Southland.

The rest of the play-off race looks wide open between six teams.

The lowest placed of those six, Auckland, have one more point (19) and the same number of wins (three) as they did this time last year.

On that occasion they went on to scrape in to the semifinals and went all the way to win the title. This time they finish with home games against Canterbury and Otago.

Waikato and North Harbour are the only teams who have to play semifinal contenders in each of their remaining two games, with North Harbour hosting fourth equal Bay of Plenty in their last fixture.

But upsets at the tailend of the season have been known to happen in past seasons and can never be ruled out.

The permutations are endless but the only way Waikato can be guaranteed a place in the semifinals is to pick up a maximum 10 points from their remaining games.

If that happened -- and assuming Wellington and Canterbury get through -- North Harbour could still finish one point ahead, if they earned two points from their loss to Waikato, but in doing so would make it impossible for Bay of Plenty to finish ahead of Waikato.

Taranaki could still finish level with Waikato on 31 points but would lose out on the who-beat-who tiebreaker system.

- NZPA

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