Canes becoming more regular visitors to Palmerston North

It was most odd for Manawatū to be given Hurricanes’ rugby matches in successive years. The Friday-nighter attracted about 8500 patrons which was more than they would’ve had for a clash between the Canes’ second-stringers and the Rebels in Wellington.

Manawatū is grateful to receive any Super game, but only three times have the Hurricanes played a New Zealand derby at the Arena. The most recent was a 30-23 win over the Blues in 2015, but now they keep the Blues for Wellington.

By the way, the Hurricanes have won 11 of their 15 games in Palmerston North.

After the historic opening Super game in 1996 when Frank Oliver was coaching the Hurricanes, the city hosted five games in five seasons, but since then they have mostly been every two years.

It was also weird for last weekend’s game to be played in balmy Palmy, the temperature registering 20 degrees when I set sail for the Arena. That was in time to see the second half of the Hurricanes Poua women who were trying to keep the Chiefs Manawa below 50 points.

I expected more spectators for that one, but many hardened rugby fans have told me the Poua lost their support when they belted out their anti-government haka and came close to losing sponsors.

One influential fan suggested it had put the women’s game back two years while many are asking why they perform a haka anyway, when the men’s teams don’t? And the mouthy TJ Perenara should stay out of it. At least the Poua wore the customary yellow while the men trotted out in their bland blackish away strip for their first-half training gallop against the non-tackling toreadors from Victoria.

At one stage there was a feeling the crowd was urging the Rebels to score to make it a contest.

It was as if the Rebels would rather have been back in Melbourne for the Formula 1 festivities. At least there someone ensured Max Verstappen’s Red Bull blew up to make that worth watching.

I spotted Hurricanes and Manawatū flanker TK Howden in a moonboot, who it appears has a broken bone in a foot. At one stage it might have been season over had he opted for surgery.

Now he’s going the rehabilitation route and the Turbos hope to get him back this season; they will need him.

Surgery was also looking likely for lock Ofa Tauatevalu on his dislocated shoulder, but not now and he might yet play for Moana Pasifika.

As usual, finance dominated the Manawatū Rugby

Union annual meeting on Tuesday and these days a

$41,026 loss is considered almost nothing. There were queries about the $1 million Silver Lake grant of which the union has spent $200,000 which it plans to somehow replenish.

New chief executive Doug Tietjens was in Hong Kong at the wedding of former Manawatū teammate Casey Stone. In his video clip, Tietjens said the union will require change and new leadership and the status quo to be challenged.

Pit Hector’s dolphins and Russell Coutts against each other and it’s going to be no contest. In the popularity stakes, the dolphins were going to win every time against Coutts and disgruntled Canterbury Sail GP ticketholders last Saturday.

Those patrons were probably disillusioned Crusaders folk and the Sail GP circus in Lyttelton Harbour gave them a diversion.

Coutts had a point when lashing out at our bureaucracy which scrubbed one day’s racing, except it was coming from the wrong man.

Few have forgotten he jumped ship in 2003 from our America’s Cup team, something most considered treasonous. He went over to the Swiss Alinghi mob who took the America’s Cup from Team NZ and Coutts reportedly pocketed $10 million for the three-year campaign.

Then in 2009 he was made one of New Zealand’s most unpopular knights by Helen Clark’s government.

As for the dolphins, Lyttelton is their home and the racing should never have been allowed there. It would be like holding the NZ Grand Prix at Manfeild while kiwis were scurrying over the track.

The little dolphins, which weigh up to only 60kg, are too often killed by boats and propellers while Coutts’ flying boats reach 70kph and sometimes up to 100kph. Their black foils and daggerboards could slash dolphins in half and also take down an F50 boat and crew. The foilers often can’t even avoid race markers, as happened at Lyttelton.

I’m just back from scoping Northland where there are hundreds of free bays and yet Coutts opted for a place that is a marine reserve.

For all I care he can take his pageant back to Saudi Arabia and I’ll side with the endangered Cephalorhynchus hectori, the world’s rarest marine dolphin. Does anyone really care who wins Sail GP races anyway?