KEY POINTS:
A lot of people feel the early Super 14 rounds have been boring because of the loss of the All Blacks and the new scrum laws.
I don't agree.
Or rather I do agree they were boring - but not for those reasons.
It's been clear that defence
is already locking up teams pretty tightly, with the exception of that high-scoring Chiefs-Hurricanes match last night, and even that seemed to be suffering from early season errors on both sides.
As for the All Blacks, well, not all of them are out of the competition at the moment. There are plenty still playing and I'm afraid most did not shine either - so we can't use that as an excuse.
All you have to do is talk to the players and most will tell you these days that defence is easier to get right than attack.
The way the game is structured, defence has become more important and effective and it is pretty much ruling the roost.
There are no holds barred and the defences are really bashing into the opponents. It's hard going.
That's why I think the standard has been ordinary so far - although I have to say the Highlanders-Force game last week was just a rank bad match.
It was interesting hearing Crusaders coach Robbie Deans after the loss to the Blues.
He wasn't too upset - he doesn't like losing but he said he thought his players had been pretty much doing the right thing - as the major fault he could see was that they missed tackles.
One of the Blues' tries underlined the point. It wasn't a matter of the tacklers falling off or anything - they just weren't there in terms of a good defence.
So what Robbie's saying is that once they get the defence right, they should beat most teams and I think he will be happy if the Crusaders can get about 75 per cent of the points available to them before the All Blacks return.
The other issue was the scrums. I saw some figures suggesting the number of collapsed scrums was down on last year after the first round. All well and good - but the official reason for the scrum changes was safety.
There are more spinal injuries from tackling than from scrummaging now - but we don't seem to be changing tackling.
They have shortened the distance the props have to meet when packing down the scrum and it's just one more thing they have to do before the hit.
I can see that some may think the new rules are disadvantaging the teams putting the ball in, as many of those scrums went backwards.
But I think that was just a case of props getting the distance between them and their opposites wrong and they then had to give ground. They'll get used to it.
On the whole, New Zealand Super 14 props adapted well and the refs did a pretty good job.
As props get used to the changes, they will work out new tricks to gain an advantage. To anyone who thinks the new scrum laws were introduced so that weak Al Baxter-type props can catch up with the Carl Haymans and the Tony Woodcocks of this world: Think again.
Hayman and Woodcock will work all this out and it will be business as usual.
While it was difficult to see very much exposed All Black form in the first rounds, I have enjoyed watching Troy Flavell.
I've noticed the work he's doing at the breakdown - and I don't mean that little tap-dance for which he somehow got a yellow card from referee Paul Honiss.
You see some players hitting the rucks and opponents just get up and run off. When Flavell hit the rucks and mauls, the opposition felt it. He hurt them. We need players like that in the All Blacks.
