Attitude shift pays dividends for Makos [Joe Wheeler]

The mood in the sheds after we drew 16-16 with NPC heavyweights Auckland, at Eden Park last Sunday, was just weird.

There's an old saying that a draw "feels like kissing your sister" and in my case, since I don't have a sister, it was like kissing my brothers.

The game ebbed and flowed a bit and no-one could really get ascendancy so I suppose we should feel OK about having picked up two points against a team chocka with Super Rugby players and which had three All Blacks returning to them.

We may still have never won at Eden Park but it's a bloody hard place to win and we've taken a step closer.

A few of my old school mates made the trek up from Blenheim, my girlfriend and her friends were there and there were a few other Makos fans there too, so that made a great contingent of Makos faithful - and they were a bit rowdier than the Auckland faithful too.

After feeling we had let ourselves down a bit against Bay of Plenty the week before, we had a massive shift in attitude. That showed up in our defence, where we were camped out on our 22 for 20 minutes or so and we hung tough and didn't let them away with anything.

There were not the soft tries we let Bay of Plenty get away with and we had a real willingness to work for your mates and not hope someone else would step up to make the play.

Auckland was the first premiership team we played this season and although all the teams in the ITM Cup deserve respect, those bigger unions have more franchise players and are bigger and more physical. Our set pieces were a little bit scratchy, losing four out of 14 lineouts, so we'll have to step that up this week. But on the positive side, replacement prop Siua Halanukonuka who stepped up for injured Tim Perry held his own scrummaging against All Black Charlie Faumuina, so that was awesome.

We've got a tough Waikato side coming up next.

They are a proud union with some exciting talent coming through and if we let it get messy and unstructured, they could rip us apart.

We're excited about playing our first game of the season in Nelson this Friday and the boys always appreciate the crowd support when we play at Trafalgar Park, so get down there and get your fins up.

Keep it long and keep it on.

• Tasman Makos lock forward Joe Wheeler writes for the Marlborough Express during the NPC season.

- The Marlborough Express