Ah, to clarify, I'm writing a module for a harness, I dont actually have the option of doing it that way.
The interface needs to be like the following:
$this->regex('key','regex');
In this case :
$this->regex('high_bidder','(?:Date . Time<.B>.*?1\.<.B><.FONT><.TD>
+\s+<TD[^>]+><FONT[^>]+>(.*?)<.FONT>|)');