Heavyweight clash is tale of two cities

The way the game between Canterbury and Auckland started last night I thought we were in for a hell of a game.

Canterbury got away to a fantastic start and Auckland weren't playing that badly at the beginning. Because of that huge rivalry between the two sides I thought it could have been a cracker. But then Auckland fell away.

Canterbury did everything right for the first 20 minutes and once they broke the Auckland side everything went their way for the rest of the game.

For Canterbury, this was a great result, especially after coming back from their loss to Tasman last weekend.

Auckland didn't help themselves, with turnovers and mistakes keeping them on the back foot for the whole of the game.

It showed there could be a difficult time ahead for Auckland, and their problems are of their own making.

They do have some reasonable talent but you're not going to win anything if you're turning over the ball as much as they are.

You can never get anything going if you're continually making mistakes.

Auckland can turn things around but the coaching staff is going to have to read the riot act to them.

A lot more pressure needs to go on to the players to up their games because, at the moment, it's just not happening for them.

But talking of not happening, Auckland's situation isn't anywhere near as bad as that of Otago.

They have lost five games without picking up a single win and it's become a disastrous campaign.

It's hard to know where Otago go after losing to Taranaki on Thursday night.

It's going to take something quite major for them to turn their season around.

Much of what happens from here on in will come down to personal pride.

I don't know whether the responsibility of where they're at should come down to their coach, Phil Mooney.

The players need to take a look at themselves and come up with something.

The player I feel most sorry for through all of this is Kees Meeuws.

He'll be saying all the right things. But for a guy who's been to the very top he must be pretty frustrated about things.

But it will take a guy like Kees to lift Otago. Whether he can take them high enough, I don't know.

But he's just what they need to get the young players through this in a positive way.

I certainly don't think there is any need to dump Mooney because of how they're going – it's too early to contemplate that and he's come into something that wasn't right to begin with.

He needs to be given a chance and the Otago board should stick with him for a bit longer.

Frank Bunce is a former All Black

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