KEY POINTS:
What a brilliant finish to the Warriors game against Souths on Sunday, with Ivan Cleary's men rattling on two tries in the final few minutes to snatch an improbable victory.
The NRL has a major advantage over its rugby rival with the all-or-nothing approach it takes to winning and losing. Victory is victory and defeat is defeat in league, so the drama is intensified.
Rugby, meanwhile, clings to its bonus point system even - most disappointingly - at test level.
At the moment, if teams need to be separated on the Super 14 table to find semifinalists and home advantage, the first tie-breaker is points differential, followed by who-beat-who and try-scoring comparisons.
The first port of call should actually be the win column on the points table. In other words, if the Crusaders and Sharks tie at the top of the Super 14 table after this weekend's final round, the Sharks should get top seeding because they have won more games.
Incredibly, bonus point champion Chiefs have shown that it is possible to sneak into the semifinals having won two fewer games than teams who miss out. It is time rugby gave the winners their due and put bonus points in their rightful, downgraded, place.
* Wade McKinnon and the Warriors can claim his "contact" with referee Jason Robinson was an accident all they like. It was an outrageous shove. McKinnon isn't a bad player, but he did a bad thing. He will be forgiven his momentary brainstorm if it remains an isolated incident but referees must be protected from physical intimidation. As usual, no one is ever truly guilty of anything in sport - which is merely a catalogue of accidents when it comes to player indiscretions. Yeah, right.
