“Northland hit pay dirt on Saturday with their brand of attack-from-anywhere rugby overcoming the might of Southland’s forward play and earning their most impressive win of the ITM Cup campaign” (Peter Thorley, The Northern Advocate, Whangarei). The 33-22 win was a great dividend for the whole team, set up by rugged defence and finished off with two long-range tries featuring Rene Ranger and Jared Payne. The result put Northland on three wins and three losses in the competition. The loss was the Stags’ first this season. Their ‘helter-skelter approach’ at Whangarei looked good at times but it led to their downfall, Logan Savory wrote in The Southland Times. The Manawatu Turbos scored their first win of the season, dispatching the big boys from Wellington 36-24 at Palmerston North. “Not enough heart. Not enough passion. Not good enough,” Toby Robson wrote in a scathing review of Wellington’s performance in The Dominion Post. “Plain and simple, the Wellington Lions need to take a hard look in the mirror after their lacklustre effort … They missed basic one-on-one tackles, they dropped passes when they were under no pressure, they fluffed their lineouts and they back-chatted the referee.” A first win of the season, too, for Otago, downing Hawke’s Bay 17-16. “There was nothing pretty about it but that didn’t matter to hardy rugby fans at Carisbrook … the Otago Daily Times reported. Other results: Counties-Manukau 23 – Tasman 3; Canterbury 28 – Bay of Plenty 9; Waikato 36 – North Harbour 27; Auckland 27 – Taranaki 13.