Southern Men survived a late penalty corner and some desperate attacking from Central to win its sixth-round match 2-1 and move into the top four.
The win gives Southern a real possibility of making the semifinals.
The Dunedin-based team will need to beat bottom-of-the-table Northland in its final round-robin match today and wait for other results.
Northland certainly will not be easy-beats. It managed to upset North Harbour in a penalty shootout in round two but lost 7-1 to Midlands yesterday.
Southern coach Dave Ross was pleased with his side's performance against Central but said his team had to hold its nerve in the dying stages.
"It was a fantastic outcome but we did it the hard way," he said.
"We had maybe eight corners in the second half and couldn't put them away. We dominated most of the second half but they kept running us down and their goalie played really well against us."
Southern trailed 1-0 before nabbing an equaliser close to halftime through Callum Bailey.
That is how the scores stayed until the hard-working midfielder grabbed the winner with about 5min remaining.
"He split the defence through the middle and scored a really good goal. So they subbed their keeper and full-court pressed us.
It got a bit hectic and they got a corner right on fulltime and we had to weather that.
"It was all a bit stressful but the boys got there in the end. To be honest, we played much better hockey and we deserved to win. It is just that we couldn't score which was a bit frustrating."
The Southern women, though, came unstuck against a quality Auckland side, losing 4-1.
Coach Sam Brown said the final score did not reflect how close the game was.
"We were 2-0 down at halftime but scored straight after the break and put a second one in which the umpires disallowed.
That would have made it 2-2 with 15 minutes left, so it was really game on.
"After that, the momentum swung back and Katie Glynn took control of the game and popped another one in which sank our hopes.
"But for 60 or 70% of the game the girls presented themselves really, really well. So that is encouraging and gives us huge hope going into our game against Central [today]."
