Dylan Cleaver: Whoever wins, the ref loses

It seems only yesterday that rugby romantics were wistfully eyeing a Southland-Hawkes Bay union - instead we have the Behemoth and the Bridesmaid meeting at the NPC altar.

Canterbury, winners of three titles this decade, and Wellington, losers of the last three finals, are undoubtedly the best two teams in the country.

In an era when negativity can reap rich rewards, they play rugby the right way.

Their development programmes (and in the case of Canterbury, the cynics would say recruitment programmes) keep churning out talented players to cover for the loss of their All Blacks.

They're coached by a couple of innovative and fearless operators. And yet ... the vast majority of the country would rather they were not in the final.

We can be a tough audience.

Of Rob Penney and Jamie Joseph, it will be the latter feeling the most pressure. Apart from the small matter of his side's appalling record in provincial finals, it was Joseph's decision this season not to play his returning All Blacks that kicked up a stink in the capital.

Quite reasonably, Joseph understood that if he was to achieve the goals of defending the Ranfurly Shield and winning the Air New Zealand Cup, he was going to have to rely on his less star-spangled players.

However, the Log o' Wood tenure foundered early, his regime was subject to trial-by-Facebook and interest in his side dropped off to the point where just 9000 turned up for last week's semifinal, the Cake Tin resembling a bright yellow wasteland.

Joseph now faces a trip to AMI Stadium knowing that anything less than victory would see the season deemed a failure.

How best to deal with the harsh glare of the spotlight? Throw somebody else under it.

Step forward Vinny Munro.

"I've found that they've [Canterbury] always had the 50-50 decisions go their way. Certainly in the final last year there were a number of marginal calls," Joseph said this week.

Joseph is not a silly man. He knows as well as anybody that Munro is a Cantabrian, refereeing his home province in his home town.

The New Zealand Rugby Union's policy of awarding the final to the best-performed referee regardless of geography is brave but flawed. No matter what happens tomorrow night, Munro will suffer under the weight of perception.

If Canterbury win, there will be dark mutterings of home-town bias in the capital, nothing can be surer. If the result goes the other way, those in red-and-black country will be convinced Munro was trying too hard to prove he did not have a Canterbury bias.

In scoring this minor psychological victory, Joseph has ensured that Munro cannot win.