Rugby: A tale of two Harbours

North Harbour's Nafi Tuitavake on the break against Southland. Photo / Getty Images

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There are two versions of the North Harbour story. The first is told by their lowly position on the table and their inability to close out games they should have won.

That's been the story for the past few years. They are a province rich in talent, poor in performance. They made the semifinals in 2005 and appeared on the cusp of a new dawn.

They took the Ranfurly Shield in 2006 and there was a real sense of Harbour having arrived; that they were the heavyweight they had always wanted to be.

But the following week they were beaten by Waikato and then ripped apart by Otago in the quarter-finals to signal there was no revival.

They had, in fact, embarked upon a sharp descent. How sharp became apparent when they resumed business in 2007. They managed one successful Shield defence against Taranaki before falling to a record 52-7 defeat to Waikato.

That drubbing was perhaps no surprise. At the end of the 2006 campaign coach Allan Pollock moved on. Not by choice. In 2005 Pollock had fallen out with his assistant, current Auckland coach Mark Anscombe.

It caused a rift within the team and Pollock only survived in 2006 because Anscombe moved on and the Harbour board placed tight controls around their management team.

When Wayne Pivac, the former Auckland and Fiji coach took over in 2007, he inherited a team destabilised by the dysfunction of the previous regime and by a number of senior departures.

The decline continued at an alarming pace. Harbour ended the season ninth. It was originally explained as re-building until Harbour were even worse in 2008, finishing 12th.

Again, there were whispers of discontent about the coach. Pivac's decision to appoint loan player Jimmy Gopperth as captain did not go down well with some.

One brave and deserved win against Canterbury to open the 2009 campaign has been long forgotten. Since then the fare has been less palatable - very much the same-old, same-old in terms of results and Harbour are again wallowing at the wrong end of the table.

That is the higher profile story - a province chronically under-achieving. Look at their talent pool and look at their results. Something is going wrong. Coaches come and go without ever quite connecting with the players. Home crowds tend to fluctuate between 5000 and 7000 - good numbers for a regional province, disappointing for a major city.

But there is the untold story of Harbour; the one that goes part-way to explaining why they have struggled. That one reaches a different conclusion about whether they are under-achieving.

"As an organisation we have taken a balanced approach towards the costs we will incur funding the professional game," says Harbour chief executive Brett Hollister. "We have made a conscious decision to focus on the community game."

Since 2006, Harbour have grown numbers by 10 per cent and have more than 9500 registered players. Only Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch have more. In the same period there have been big increases in coaching and referee numbers.

The strength of Harbour's commitment to grassroots rugby became indisputable this year.

"We took the decision that we were going to keep all our provincial players in the club competition to the end," says Hollister."We will have a review at the end of the season to see if that was the right thing to do. It meant that at one stage we had players involved in pre-season provincial games on Wednesday and club games on a Saturday."

It's Hollister's contention that with close to 10,000 players a firm handle has to be kept on how much is spent on the top 30. On the league table of spending, Harbour are 10th in terms of the total costs pumped into their provincial team.

Take any given year in the professional era and the league table of spending will closely correlate with performance. The big spenders are Auckland, Canterbury, Wellington and Waikato and, until recent times, Otago. They are the only sides to have won titles in the professional age with Auckland taking six, Canterbury four and the other three one each.

Harbour's spending is further diluted by the fact that more than 30 per cent of their total budget goes to players who rarely feature. Tony Woodcock played his first game for Harbour in three years this weekend.

Last year Anthony Boric, Anthony Tuitavake and Rudi Wulf barely featured while another of their higher earners, Luke McAlister, has only made fleeting appearances since he broke into the All Blacks in 2005.

Harbour have produced six All Blacks in the last four years and could argue they had a major role in shaping Nick Evans, Craig Newby and Greg Rawlinson.

"There is no other sport I can think of where you are have to play without your best players. We are not happy with where we have finished on the table in the last two years and where we are now," says Hollister.

"But I would say if we had access to all of our players for all of the campaign, then we would be in a different position. I would also say that if we delivered a consistency of performance then we would have more people coming to the stadium each week."

There is an irony here that Harbour have been punished for developing All Blacks. The system now offers them some financial protection as the New Zealand Rugby Union will pay up to 75 per cent of an All Black's provincial salary if he's involved in the Tri Nations.

But in the past, Harbour have been clobbered. They have, in terms of player development, performed at the same level as the big five unions that double as franchise bases yet they miss out on the estimated $1m windfall that comes with being a Super Rugby home.

In the boom-bust culture of provincial rugby where ambition leads to overspending, where success is followed by disaster, Harbour deserve recognition for their stance.

Yet, they must accept that, despite the restrictions with which they must contend, they need to show some improved form.

The appointment of Craig Dowd and Jeff Wilson for this season was a big and not universally popular call.

The union had its emphasis on grassroots rugby; of selecting players from within the region and not buying from outside; and then handed the coaching reins to two high-profile former All Blacks with limited experience.

It was a decision that in some ways was at odds with their philosophy, particularly as Wilson had no links to the province.

But Hollister is standing by his men and believes that both Dowd and Wilson are potentially excellent coaches.

"There is no doubt everyone is hurting right now. But I have enormous faith and confidence in Craig and Jeff. The players are right behind them too. We will see where we are at come the end of the season."