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Preview: Air NZ Cup, Part One

Wednesday 20th August 2008

Counties Manukau: Searching for their winning form lost after Round One

Round Four of the Air New Zealand Cup sees the return of several All Blacks who have been released from Tri-Nations duty by coach Graham Henry in a bid to give his bench-warmers some much-needed game time.

The action kicks off at Mount Smart Stadium where the cellar-dwelling Counties Manukau host the sixth-placed Otago.

Matches between these two sides tend to be close and well contested, regardless of previous form, but it would be another major upset if the Steelers knocked a solid Otago team over this Thursday.

Counties Manukau v Otago

Otago desperately need the five competition points when the team comes up against Counties Manukau on Thursday at Growers Stadium in Pukekohe.

Otago sit in sixth position after three rounds of the 2008 Air New Zealand Cup on nine points, six behind clear favourites Wellington.

The South Islanders will be well aware of the pressure to keep in touch with the leaders, considering they have a much harder run home in the final few rounds.

Five points will be huge, especially coming into the harder games towards the end of the season. So Otago need to get as many as they possibly can in this early part of the season to put them in good stead.

If the visitors get stuck into Counties Manukau in the set piece, they can get on the front foot.

If Otago win the all-important forward battle and commit the large Counties forwards into the tight work, their exciting back-line should be too good for the Steelers.

However, everybody wrote off Counties in Round One when they produced the upset of the season to beat defending champs Auckland 17-6.

It was Auckland's first defeat since the semi-final stage of the 2006 season.

But since then the Steelers have found the going tough, falling back into the old habits which made life tough for them in the 2006 and 2007 seasons.

They lost their Round Two fixture to Bay of Plenty 45-3, before being smashed 64-7 by Wellington last weekend.

The latter result featured some of the worst attempted defensive work seen by any side to date in the 2008 Air New Zealand Cup.

Coming off a reasonably comfortable 23-18 win at home to Northland last Friday, Otago were able to make some good progress from their loss to Canterbury a week earlier.

Obviously Northland are no Canterbury, but Otago's set piece went very well from the previous week and that builds confidence amongst the forwards.

Counties Manukau coach Greg Aldous has ripped into his team after two poor performances in a row, making wholesale changes.

The areas that underwent drastic surgery were the loose forward mix, the inside backs and the bench, with perhaps the most important inclusion being Tanner Vili at fly-half.

Otago has made only one change, putting Chris Noakes in at pivot ahead of Daniel Bowden. If Jed Vercoe is kept off the bench by a back strain he will be replaced by Sam Hibberd.

Prediction: Anything other than a decent Otago win will be an upset. Otago should take the match by a minimum of 10 points.

Counties Manukau: 15 Siale Piutau, 14 Lelia Masaga, 13 Niva Ta'auso, 12 Dean Cummins, 11 David Raikuna, 10 Tanner Vili, 9 Samisoni Fisilau, 8 Gary Saifoloi, 7 Fritz Lee, 6 DJ Forbes, 5 Andrew Van der Heijden (c), 4 Jamie Chipman, 3 Jayden Murch/Eugene Beneke, 2 Lance Po-ching, 1 Simon Lemalu.
Replacements: 16 Ilaisa Maasi, 17 Beneke/Rob Katu, 18 Rupeni Nasiga, 19 Viliami Fihaki, 20 Romi Ropati, 21 Kevin Farrell, 22 Sherwin Stowers.

Otago: 15 Glen Horton, 14 Lucky Mulipola, 13 Brett Mather, 12 Aaron Bancroft, 11 Karne Hesketh, 10 Chris Noakes, 9 Toby Morland, 8 Steven Setephano, 7 Craig Newby (c), 6 Seko Qaraniqio, 5 Tom Donnelly, 4 Ross Kennedy, 3 Ben Nolan, 2 Jason MacDonald, 1 Keith Cameron.
Replacements: 16 Peter Mirrielees, 17 Jed Vercoe/Sam Hibbard, 18 Paul Grant, 19 Eben Joubert, 20 Sean Romans, 21 Daniel Bowden, 22 Ben Smith.

Date: Thursday, August 21
Venue: Mount Smart Stadium, Auckland
Kick-off: 19:05 (07:05 GMT)
Referee: Josh Noonan
Television match official: Matt Stanish