Champs? They're all hiss and wind

By CHRIS RATTUE

Wellington might not have lost their NPC crown quite yet. But it looks as if it's about to clatter on to the ground at any moment.

There is probably some mathematical way that they can get into the top four, but it is extremely unlikely and hardly deserved.

After the euphoria of last year's triumph, with a team still young enough to suggest that a dynasty, however small, might be in store, they have provided an often pathetic defence of their title.

Their only victories from eight matches this year have been against Taranaki, Counties Manukau and Northland.

They managed one of the most extraordinary feats in the history of the national game when, as champions, they lost at home to Bay of Plenty and Southland.

How can this be, with a side packing some of the biggest shooters in the game?

When Wellington play North Harbour at home tonight, their fans will once again have to endure the hit-and-miss theory that dogs their team. Wellington might win by 20, but they might also play like men who hardly know each other and have lost the game by halftime.

Maybe the answer to this question comes in the various stories that have popped up through the season concerning some Wellington players.

Filo Tiatia, Inoke Afeaki and Dion Waller have all obviously been considering their futures in both the capital and New Zealand rugby.

They are players who feel that time has passed them by, and can see opportunity and fortune elsewhere.

Now, Paul Steinmetz has All Black second five-eighths Pita Alatini turning up, gunning for his position next year, and is unsure about his future.

The great teams are dominated by great players who often have some common history, believe in the present, and have no intentions of going anywhere else in the near future.

That is hardly the case with this Wellington team, and it shows.

Beneath the howls of protest that followed the huge penalty count against Wellington in their Ranfurly Shield challenge against Canterbury, was a belief among a number of other teams that Dave Rennie's side had something like that coming to them.

Three senior characters in other NPC teams told me they believed that Wellington had finally got their dues.

They said the Wellington players repeatedly came into rucks and mauls from illegal angles, often disregarded the tackled ball rule, and acted like "flying missiles" in hitting opponents off the ball.

They all described Wellington as by far the worst rule-benders in the competition.

One coach said: "A lot of referees penalise players for the same offence, one, two, three times, and then they give up. Wellington seem to work on this principle, that if they keep doing it, in the end they won't get penalised. Against Canterbury, they finally found a referee [Steve Walsh] who was prepared to keep penalising them."

In the end, Wellington may have succumbed to a lack of common goals and discipline. Certainly something has been drastically wrong. Tonight, they will play a North Harbour team who seem to have put behind them a madcap past and now have players who buy into a common way of doing things.

The sad thing about Wellington's apparent demise is that they promised so much.

In an era dominated by structure, they had players and a way of doing things that could break the mould. But on the evidence so far, that promise has been scattered to the Wellington wind.