All Blacks won't say it in public, but speaking to a senior test player recently he didn't disagree when I suggested that while armchair warriors like me loved seeing Kiwi teams smashing each other, with every game a local derby, it wasn't as much fun for the players.
In blunt terms the Australian Super teams are a step below most New Zealand sides, which often gives what amounts to a breather for our Super players when they're in a transtasman game.
That's not jingoistic bragging, just a fact. In the last pre-Covid Super season in 2019, played with 15 teams from New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina and Japan, there were four Kiwi teams and one Australian side (the Brumbies) in the top eight. There were three Australian teams, and one from New Zealand (the Blues) in the bottom five.
This year, an exhausting Super Rugby Aotearoa competition was followed by 15 tests, 10 of them living in isolation while out of New Zealand. If Elon Musk had helpfully provided a squad of robots there might not have been any All Black drop off late in the year. But in this universe, how could some players not have been jaded?
In passing, the argument that All Blacks are well paid (they are), that rugby's their job (it is), and therefore they shouldn't be afflicted with mental or physical exhaustion holds no water for me. Money alone didn't make Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley happy did it? At the level of sport an All Black plays, pride in his own and the team's performance will be the greatest driver.
Colin Mansbridge, the chief executive of the Crusaders, is the point man for the campaign to get our Government to allow the full Super Rugby Pacific competition to go ahead with teams in "intensively managed bubbles".
Mansbridge has, wisely, avoided rabid politicising of rugby's attempt to persuade Sports Minister Grant Robertson that the Government could afford some flexibility, and still keep the level of risk low.
If Mansbridge and his colleagues manage to get special dispensation there will no doubt be some cries of favouritism, and that would be true.
But given that (a) Every person in this year's large All Blacks squad was double vaccinated and (b) nobody in that group caught or passed on Covid-19, it would also be fair to say that rugby at the top level in New Zealand has shown that it can be trusted to do the right thing and stick to the rules.
● The only thing as impressive as Ajaz Patel's stunning 10-wicket bag in the cricket test in Mumbai was his public reaction to his stunning feat.
When you come back to your place of birth and become just the third man in the history of the game to take every wicket in a test innings you'd actually be entitled to a little swagger. But Patel? Not a trace.
● In 2015 former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting and West Indies legend Michael Holding suggested that the coin toss before a test match should be done away with.
They argued that if the visiting captain was automatically given the option of batting or bowling first it would remove, they suggested, any advantage winning the toss gave a home team when wickets had been carefully prepared to assist the local bowlers.
Given how much power and money in world cricket now lies in India, it was hardly a surprise their idea never got beyond media speculation.
But if, somehow, the visiting captain calling the shots managed to sneak into the game, how much would the sport change?
