Maven2 Plugin and endpoint

I have been unable to get the Maven2 plug-in to run tests where different endpoints are required for different test steps. I have appropriate endpoints configured for each step, and the tests work fine when run from the SoapUI UI, or from the command line.
However, with Maven

• If I do not specify the endpoint property, I get an java.net.ConnectException Unknown Host : http


• If I do specify the endpoint, it is applied to all the test steps, so fails on the steps where the required endpoint is different. Just specifying the host and port (which are the same for all the endpoints i require) does not work either.

Looking at old posts on the SourceForge forum, I see this problem has been around for a long time, but have not spotted any resolution.
There is a workaround, namely to use the Maven antrunner plug-in and the java task. This works fine.
If the Maven problem will not be fixed, it would at least be good to have a statement to that effect, but it can't be that hard to fix it!