KEY POINTS:
This weekend ought to see, if it hasn't already, at least one rip-snorting rugby match at last. That is all we ask, a good furious game that matters.
Another Super 14 has produced another notable New Zealand finish: four of our five teams were in the running for semifinal slots until two of them met last night. We still rule this roost.
But crowds are not coming anymore. The annual professional competitions badly need a fresh format. I have a suggestion.
The best thing about the Super 14 is the international element. Why have teams from the same country playing each other? The three countries could each have four teams that play eight matches, each team playing one month at home, one month away.
The schedule would restore some of the attraction of tours, franchises would find it less expensive and teams less tiring than their travel at present.
Only the play-offs could pitch teams from the same country against each other, with semifinals and finals held, as now, at the home ground of the team with the more round-robin points.
That would make for a shorter, sharper Super 12 and for us it would add a feasible challenge of filling all four play-off slots.
That done, let's think of the rest of the season.
The provincial competition could be given the limelight through June and July. The international season could start in August with the tri-nations expanded to include Argentina and a Pacific team. Countries need play each other only once, alternating home and away year by year.
Our annual match with the Springboks could be contested for a trophy as prized as the Bledisloe Cup. The old rivalry would be revitalised.
That could be concluded by November. Then, in my dreams, the hemisphere champions would tour Europe, making a clean sweep of the six nations there.
But back to reality: Who would be Graham Henry right now? The lessons of last year will have congealed and any gratitude that might have overcame him at his reappointment should have given way by now to a terrible realisation.
The disaffection with rugby at present seems to have quite a lot to do with that reappointment. I argued for it at the time, and still do, but there have been consequences I didn't take into account.
It has cost us a sense of fresh start. Sacking the coach, as we always have previously, might never have won the prize but it did rekindle hope.
The decision not to replace Henry with Robbie Deans was so bitterly resented by many rugby fans that they swore off the game over the summer. The fact that the Canterbury coach has marched the Crusaders to a top-table finish in this season's Super 14 and probably another championship, will not have improved the mood.
In a week or two Henry will gratefully welcome Dean's proteges to All Black training while the rejected coach goes to the Wallabies. It is a little bit of a mess.
And it has been made worse, as rugby writers keep reminding us, by the talent we are losing to the lure of northern money.
But Dan Carter's likely departure seems the only serious blow to Henry's prospects of rebuilding his brilliant All Blacks of two seasons ago. And Carter will be there this year.
So will the next man in the Canterbury production line, Stephen Brett, probably outside him, just as Carter began his test career outside Andrew Mehrtens. The handover could be equally smooth.
Outside them, Henry needs a new centre. He lost faith at the World Cup in the two he had been grooming. We might at last see Anthony Tuitavake there. He is a mature centre who comes into the line at creative angles with the pace and strength to burst defences and can distribute in a tackle.
Henry also needs a new halfback, preferably one with the authority of Justin Marshall. That was the quality we missed most when it mattered at Cardiff. Andrew Ellis might have the makings of it.
There is, as always, more than enough talent to replace those who cash in with clubs in England, France or Japan. We have the world's best rugby nursery and there is nothing to suggest we are losing it, though it would help to know how we do it.
Last weekend this paper reported that three Auckland high school sports coaches had been suspended for poaching players. We need to know whether the poaching is the secret of our success.
It is possible the nursery has been created by ensuring that schools can keep the talent they nurture, but it seems more likely top players develop by gravitating to the best teams.
Here's to poachers, at home and abroad. They probably help maintain our enviable supply of hard players and they make the game a financially enticing career. Without them our rugby might be really be in trouble.
