Newsgroups: rec.sport.rugby
Subject: Re: Otago beats N Harbour.
From: awil2@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Andrew James        Willmott       )
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:36:02 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept. University of Auckland

In <1992Sep28.114053@IASTATE.EDU> rwturner@IASTATE.EDU (Richard W Turner) writes:

> [...]

>was one of the 25000 frenzied otago
>fans at Carisbrook who saw them beat
>N Harbour 26-23.  All I can say (and
They were pretty quiet during the second half. What happened? I never
thought I'd hear(?) a silent Carisbrook crowd! :-)

> [...]

>Otago.  But what really made my day
>was to find out that Auckland had
>LOST and got BEATEN and LOST again
>to WAIKATO.  When two teams complain
>about the date and site of a final
>that they haven't even earned the right
>to be in it makes you happy to learn 
>that they lost and didn't make the 
>final.  The pleasure is doubled
>when its Auckland teams that are 
>involved but then again only Aucklanders
>could be so arrogant. 
>If I could, I'd have a speights and
>celebrate but I can't get speights
>in Iowa so I'll have a budweiser instead.

>Richard Turner
>Parochial Otagoite and ex Balcluthan.

You're a pretty sad lot from the south island, aren't you! When you take more
pleasure from seeing another team get beaten than seeing your own team win,
well, you must have a fairly large chip on the shoulder. As for Aucklanders
being arrogant, if the net had seen one tenth of the excited comment from us
that we get from canterbury and otago supporters every time their team wins,
the whinging from you lot could be heard from the Chatham Islands.

Lets face it, Auckland's track record over the past few years has given you
the perfect chance to moan and whine and complain. Auckland rugby is boring!
Their grip on the shield is killing the game! Fox is as useless as udders on
a bull! :-) You've only got to pull on an Auckland jersey, and you can walk
straight into the All Blacks! The Auckland players should have played five
games the day before, and have both hands tied behind their back when playing
a shield game to give other team a better chance! Ok, so that last one sounds
*extremely* arrogant, but it seems to be the natural extension of some of the
things I've heard from the south. How about, and this is a really radical
concept, beating Auckland by being the better team on the day! Just like
Waikato!

And then there's Bill Taylor who seems to find it necessary to label us as
characters out of The Lord of the Rings! :-) Bizarre!

Aucklanders know perfectly well how good/bad their team is. If you'd listened
to the local 1ZB coverage of the match (ok, so it's difficult from America :-)
you would have heard Murray Deaker predicting that Auckland would lose that
afternoon. We've had so many shield games over the last few months that even
ardent fans are getting sick of it all. God knows how the players must feel.

At least we've finally got to the stage where Otago, Nth Harbour and Waikato
are as good as or better than Auckland. Next season promises to be an excellent
one.

Andrew

N.B. My personal opinion is that we should scrap the shield altogether. We've
got semifinals and finals in the national league now, so what's it good for?
It's not really an indicator of the best team in the country, and in my view
it's a weight around the neck of the holding team. Comments?

-- 
+--- Andrew Willmott ------------- awil2@cs7.cs.aukuni.ac.nz ---+
|  Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?         |
|  A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off. |
+---------------------------------------------- Auckland, NZ ---+