Win or start the season postmortem early.
In the messed-up Covid-19 world in which we live the Stags still have an opportunity to scrape into the semifinals of the Championship despite registering five consecutive losses.
Counties Manukau and North Harbour were forced to pull out of the competition due to Auckland being stuck in lockdown.
That has opened the door for Southland but it will shut again if it fails to beat Northland in Invercargill today.
Stags coach Dale MacLeod said it was not a complicated scenario.
‘‘I suppose it is a bit like a quarterfinal really. Whoever wins it will get an opportunity,’’ he said.
He has named his strongest possible squad from the players available.
Star loose forward Jordan Stewart has been named on the bench and will be making his debut if he gets on, while prop Shaun Stodart returns to the bench.
Key players Marty Banks and Mike McKee have both been cleared to play in the game after failing head injury assessments during the Stags game against Wellington last Saturday.
‘‘The lead-up has been a little bit disrupted. We only found out on Saturday after the game against Wellington that we were going into a short week.’’
The game was brought forward a day and MacLeod did not have the heart to cancel a planned day off for the Stags, so the side has had its preparation time trimmed by a day.
‘‘But there are no excuses — we’ve just got to front up. As a rugby player these are the games you live for.’’
MacLeod, who has previously coached Northland, said it was much easier to host this fixture than to travel from one end of the country to the other, so the Stags have that going in their favour.
‘‘Those poor buggers are flying into Dunedin and then busing down. They’ll get here late [on Friday].
‘‘People don’t realise what it takes to play for Southland and Northland. It is not just the playing it is all the stuff outside of it like the travel and the logistics of all that sort of stuff.’’
