Photos: Super 14 kicks offKEY POINTS:
The rugby season is here. For some, it is a moment to shake off the World Cup's pain and move on in an optimistic way. Others will resign themselves to another grim four-year trek until the All Blacks are again the team to beat, and duly get beaten.
The Super 14 season has started. It's a trophy dominated by New Zealand teams, with Canberra's Brumbies doing a couple of drop-bys, and last year landing in South Africa for the first time.
Like it or not - and plenty don't - rugby is big, as are sports worldwide. Sport dominates US television's top 10 lists with five Super Bowls plus the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding figure skating showdown at the 1994 winter Olympics.
The 9/11 coverage eclipses everything, while the Richard Nixon resignation fails to register.
The O.J. Simpson verdict went much closer.
On this weekend's showing, rugby is not the rugby we knew. It has been cut and polished for the television audience. Stoppages are both fewer and shorter. As a spectacle it has moved closer to the fast and camera-friendly Australian rules and Gaelic football in its use of territory and relentless running.
The new pace also reduces the ruck's dark mystery.
Because these end quickly, they are no longer the places of legend where men settled things among themselves, justice was efficient, and no one ran sulking to mother.
For the nostalgic, this might represent a loss akin to finding out exactly how a magician does it.
Unfortunately for them, rugby is now just another wave in the sports tide. It must look good to compete, and the new transparency is a solid start.
While the game itself looks fresher, the commentary, for the Crusaders/Brumbies opener, stayed in safe, experienced hands. Grant Nesbit did the play-by-play. Tony Johnson was on the sidelines. Murray Mexted, the only ex-All Black of the three, did comments and colour. They kept things unobtrusive, telling us what to expect and why things happened rather than relentlessly over-commentating the obvious. Mexted was particularly effective, dropping the stretch for simile and metaphor that once made him a riveting listen, not always for reasons he would choose.
Mexted joined Ian Jones for the pre-match. Both were casually dressed, sans ties. Mexted was in a blue and white striped shirt so distracting on television it might have been a strobe light.
Rugby is now an international and highly professional game. Putting Jones and Mexted, and anyone else appearing regularly, into something a little snappier would signal this is serious business. The Australians do this sort of thing well. For big games the "at one with the boys in the pub" look goes over the side and they don the sharp suits and ties.
One thought: if rugby is using TV as a marketing leader - and what sport isn't? - a possibility for maintaining that speed would be to allow unlimited substitutions. While this fractures the "fittest/strongest wins" ethos, it is a logical next step. If rugby can get this close to losing the sacred ruck surely anything is possible.
