Paul Lewis: Forget worthy - make competition fly

More people might be interested in Thursday night rugby if it wasn't such an obvious case of the tail wagging the dog - and if the quality so far on offer in the Air New Zealand Cup hadn't been quite so dire.

While the playoff/repechage stages of the Air New Zealand Cup mean there is an extra game to be played - seven a weekend instead of six - there seems only one reason for this new push: TV ratings.

I mean, someone please tell me that scheduling of matches wasn't all covered off when they formulated and announced the format of the Air New Zealand Cup.

Now, all of a sudden, Saturdays and Sundays are not quite good enough. Points are made that the powers-that-be do not wish to clash with other sports, like the business end of the NRL, for example.

It all comes back to ratings and the ratings, I believe, may be driven by the fact that the rugby is not very good. There are worries that no one will watch.

I'm not getting at your Northlands, Manawatus, Tasmans and Counties. It's your big blokes - your Aucklands, your Wellingtons, even (on occasion) Canterbury, who have been below par.

We should maybe withhold judgement until we have seen the repechages and playoffs but the initial response to the ANZC has been: Worthy but dull. So, so dull.

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a column ('Good ship NPC continues to sink') which was written after depressingly low attendances at that time. Now, with a brand new format, it appears the ANZC may not even have the pulling power on television.

What other conclusion can you reach when the national game seeks a TV spot outside the reach of other sports?

Here's a quote from that September 2005 column: "The issue is not that the NPC has fallen down the pecking order of our rugby contests. It is rather that it is a dinosaur dating from the amateur, provincial days which, fine though they were, are long gone in this country. No one knows what killed the dinosaurs but we might all get a grandstand view of this one or, rather, we'll watch it on TV".

And maybe not even that. I still believe the call from the column is relevant: New Zealand provincial rugby needs a new competition, a new focal point, a new start as opposed to a slow death.

This is probably the time to point out that the NZRU originally wanted to amalgamate unions to produce a smaller but more even and hotly-contested competition.

Then they were howled down by the heartlanders wanting a provincial spread of teams.

To be fair, the smaller unions have done pretty well. And the ANZC has indeed proved a platform where several promising young players - of whom we'd never or barely heard - have made a bit of a statement.

But it is looking increasingly as though the NZRU might have been right. Less might have been more, although I'd add the rider that we still need a spark; a wholesale change; plus the revision of the Ranfurly Shield rules to make the ANZC really fly.

The best game of the ANZC to date was, by far, the Ranfurly Shield challenge between Canterbury and Otago. Maybe it wasn't the best game in the world but it was compelling because of the weight of history and the fact that it was an even contest with few All Blacks playing. Tradition plus modern adjustments, that's the key.

Apart from that game, however, we arrive back at the word "dire". It has been as if the bigger unions are plodding through the group stages and saving their powder until the playoffs. Let's have some invention and creativity for upcoming years, please, so we can put some life back into a competition which - although the jury is still out - looks like it might be getting it where Steve Irwin got the stingray barb.

In the meantime, why not try Monday night rugby? There will be factors and TV reasons about which I know nothing but Monday seems a better bet than Thursday to me.

OK, Monday night league in Australia failed but not all Australia is hooked on the NRL.

A better comparison might be the US, where Monday night American football is not only successful but an institution.

However, American football is played in a season much shorter than rugby's so a few Monday nights are not such a challenge.

Whatever the outcome, fiddling with a ship's itinerary isn't going to work if it isn't carrying enough passengers.

To paraphrase that 2005 column: "Never mind the deckchairs [on the Titanic]. We need a whole new ship. Fast."