Table:

Pos. Team P W B PTS
1 BoP 2 2 2 10
2 Tasman 1 1 1 5
3 Taranaki 1 1 1 5
4 Canterbury 1 1 1 5
5 Hawke’s Bay 1 1 1 5
6 Wellington 1 1 1 5
7 Southland 1 1 0 4
8 North Harbour 1 0 1 1
9 Counties-Manukau 2 0 1 1
10 Auckland 1 0 0 0
11 Otago 1 0 0 0
12 Northland 1 0 0 0
13 Waikato 1 0 0 0
14 Manawatū 1 0 0 0

Fixtures:

Friday 16/08:

  • Otago v Auckland

Saturday 17/08:

  • Northland v Manawatū
  • Tasman v Canterbury
  • Hawke’s Bay v Southland (Ranfurly Shield Challenge)

Sunday 18/08:

  • BoP v North Harbour
  • Wellington v Taranaki
  • Counties-Manukau v Waikato

My Predictions:

  • Auckland 13+
  • Northland 21+
  • Tasman 6-
  • Hawkes-Bay 6+ (Hoping to make it to McLean Park for this one)
  • BoP 13+
  • Taranaki 6-
  • Waikato 13-
  • TagMeInSkipIGotThis@lemmy.nzOPEnglish
    1·
    25 days ago

    One result was a bit of a surprise, and most of the rest of the matches were plenty competitive perhaps because it was quite wet most of the weekend which is always a leveller. Here’s the results of Round 2:

    spoiler
    • Otago 27 v 25 Auckland
    • Northland 35 v 18 Manawatū
    • Tasman 22 v 7 Canterbury
    • Hawke’s Bay 31 v 17 Southland
    • BoP 24 v 20 North Harbour
    • Wellington 26 v 19 Taranaki
    • Counties-Manukau 20 v 26 Waikato

    Only 1 away win which I usually think is a sign of a healthy competition, where all the teams are hopefully fairly close to each other. Time will tell of course.

    Otago getting up over Auckland at home was a surprise to me especially after last weekend losing to Southland; so I was even more on edge at McLean Park especially once it started raining. Southland were pretty good but my Magpies managed to play most of the game at the right end of the park and with tempo were able to push a few more tries through.

    Wellington getting up at home against the defending champs is a great result for them, and Tasman beating their franchise partners by such a big margin will make for fun bragging rights next time the Crusaders are in camp.

    BoP have done as well as you could hope for a storm week, getting 3 from 3 and bonus points in each so are pretty cemented at the top of the table along with Hawke’s Bay & Wellington who have also had perfect starts. Counties-Manukau didn’t win anything in their storm week but at least picked up a couple of bonus points which sees them ahead of perennial stragglers Manawatū, who have the wooden spoon, but the surprise is seeing Auckland down in 13th with only 1 BP to show for their first two weeks.

    Lot’s to look forward to in Round 3, Hawke’s Bay & Canterbury hit their storm week the Bay have to play 2 of them away, whereas the Rams get 2 of theirs at home. But given we hold the shield that means 2/3 games in the storm week aren’t defences so I kinda prefer it that way even if we might not pick up all the results we want - particularly playing Canterbury down in little Britain.