Poaching plan sours vital win for North Harbour

By CHRIS RATTUE

North Harbour won the battle, but Otago are gearing up to win the war.

Harbour positioned themselves for their first semifinals appearance in three years with a stodgy 20-3 win over Otago at Albany on Saturday night.

But there were dark threats from Otago coach Wayne Graham afterwards that the southern raiding party on North Harbour players might not be at an end.

Nick Evans is off to Dunedin after this season, Craig Newby will join him if the New Zealand Rugby Union allows, and the Super 12 host union is eyeing up more imports to deal with their woes.

Graham openly admitted that he would "like to have a team with McAlister, Evans, a couple of the Gears and Rudi Wulf".

"That would make a difference. We're a young team short of a couple of playmakers," said Graham. "I guess if there has been a mistake then it is that our planning into the future hasn't been that accurate.

"All of a sudden we are short of players in key positions because we haven't brought them through or haven't recruited well enough.

"It's something we need to address and we're doing that. When the transfer season comes around you'll find we have rectified the situation."

When told of Graham's comments, Harbour coach Allan Pollock - who will also lose Hosea Gear to Wellington - said his players were continually under pressure to leave and one of his jobs was to keep the team's focus amid such pressures.

Saturday's match was a candidate for worst of the season, which is no surprise given Otago's involvement. They have often been dreadful and again offered a scant foundation with no frills on top.

Harbour captain Joe Ward and Pollock were beaming following the game, after their surprise plan to take Otago on in the forwards won the day.

"It's a classic coaching strategy to confront the opposition where they think they are strongest," said Pollock. "To break the mould of razzle dazzle and take a Super 12 franchise on in the forwards, and more than compete, is worth its weight in gold."

Harbour also had to overcome a bout of illness which had run through the forwards. Tony Woodcock and Greg Rawlinson were hit by a virus, while something else had literally run through Marty Veale.

All Black prop Woodcock had been in bed for two days, only turning up at the team's hotel at 3pm on Saturday. Unusually, he couldn't last the game, meaning the rotund figure of Mike Noble went for 80 minutes. Even then, Woodcock refused to come off when the Harbour coaches believed he had had enough, instead putting in five minutes more.

Veale wanted to keep going, but couldn't muster the energy and finally had to call it quits.

Rawlinson, who was complaining about his illness by the fifth minute, managed to soldier on.

Ward said: "He was absolutely out to it but he was still mindlessly tackling guys and running. I asked him if he was all right and he couldn't speak. It was like he was in a drunken stupor - it was a fantastic effort."

The Harbour forwards certainly had a bigger load than usual to carry. Pollock and assistant Mark Anscombe, finding that the bad weather was going to continue through to Saturday night, threw a new game plan on their team at the final training run on Thursday.

Not only did they take on Otago - with an All Black front row - in the forwards, but they instituted a double first five-eighths system involving fullback Evans sharing the pivot role with Luke McAlister to confuse the Otago defence.

The result was hardly pretty. The first decent back move took half an hour to appear, with Evans slicing through leading to a Hosea Gear try. The other try came on fulltime, replacement hooker Roger Dustow burrowing over.

Harbour were denied on two other occasions, with Evans losing control as he chased a McAlister grubber and the video referee snuffing out a Rico Gear attempt.

North Harbour, who are on 25 points, believe 29 is the "magic number" which will get them a semifinal place. They face a much stiffer test in Hamilton on Sunday and then return to Albany to face Bay of Plenty.


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