KEY POINTS:
Northern Hemisphere suits could barely hide their disdain when former Australian boss John O'Neill suggested creating a Super Nine biennial competition.
Never one to sit still or think in straight lines, O'Neill, perhaps giddy after putting on such a marvellous World Cup, proposed jazzing up the November international window.
Every year Australia, New Zealand and South Africa came to Europe to fulfil the random itinerary imposed upon them by the International Rugby Board.
O'Neill reckoned there was a golden opportunity for the random element to be formalised every second year. He proposed the Sanzar nations and Six Nations be split into three groups of three with the details to be discussed in time.
That time never came as the idea was thrown out at the conceptual stage. It would devalue the Six Nations, cried the Northern executives who branded the Super Nine another daft Sanzar proposal that was not in the best interests of the global game.
It was December 2003 when O'Neill mooted the Super Nine concept and three years on, once again, the man New Zealanders love to hate has shown he was ahead of his time.
The game is in desperate need of some form of major distraction between World Cups, more so in the Southern Hemisphere where the Tri Nations has become like nondescript wallpaper - quietly existing in the background, causing mild offence with its blandness.
It seems now that a test can never be analysed in the present. A team gets stuffed and the coach can prattle on about the positives the players will have taken as they prepare for the World Cup.
Even when the All Blacks hammered France in Lyon no one wanted to wallow in the now - it was all about determining what the result would mean for both teams' World Cup chances.
No other sport has such a pre-occupation with their showpiece event. The World Cup-winning Italian football team barely had time to drive their Alfa Romeos through the streets of Rome while indulging in some excessive, celebratory horn-tooting before they were called back to play in European Championship qualifiers.
International football coaches don't select for the future nor talk about development. They can't. Every game they play has something resting on it. Performance is judged solely in the context of the 90 minutes in which it was delivered.
Compare that with what we have seen this November. Australia have bumbled their way through Europe, with little concern whether they win, lose or draw.
Coach John Connolly experiments with the deranged energy of Mr Hyde and the results have been just as catastrophic.
South Africa are equally profligate, trying a brilliant winger at centre for the hell of it while keeping their only half-decent players back home in the Republic.
France have persevered with a two-legged donkey at first-five eighths for no other reason than to give little away before the World Cup and they follow a game plan which has the sole purpose of creating the false impression that they are in fact not very good.
The only reason New Zealand have not mucked around is because they have spent the rest of the season mucking around.
The upshot of all this focus on next year has been to rob paying fans of real test football and make them think the next time the Southern Hemisphere big boys are in town they might be better off giving rugby a miss and slogging it out Christmas shopping.
If all this experimentation nonsense kicks off again in 2008, rugby is doomed. Test football needs to be protected. The sacred cow can't be dumped in the laboratory and exposed to ill-conceived experiments.
With every nation only looking out for themselves, the sport needs a champion.
O'Neill was that man - thinking in expansionist terms when everyone else pushed the protectionist theme.
He's been lost to the game but the seed he planted in 2003 can still be nurtured and grown.
