KEY POINTS:
Friday's big rugby announcement might have been about Northland and Tasman staying alive, but it was also about the national championship as it once was - a jewel in the nation's rugby crown - being well and truly dead.
The days of packed stadiums and soaring TV ratings for provincial rugby are long gone and thoughts of engineering a competition that might bring them back have been shelved.
The focus has been switched to creating a competition that identifies and nurtures talent and services the needs of the provincial unions.
The decision to retain Northland and Tasman in a 14-team national championship represents a significant philosophical shift from the power brokers in the NZRU. An organisation often accused of being obsessed with the bottom line seems to have made a decision based on what is best for the game, rather than the balance sheet.
The recommendation to axe two teams from the competition was all about money. Heading into last week's momentous meeting, the word most frequently used by the game's administrators to describe the 14-team competition was "unsustainable".
Provincial unions were losing money hand over fist and the NZRU made it quite clear it couldn't continue to bankroll a competition that had become a significant drain on the game's financial resources.
On Friday afternoon, however, when chairman Jock Hobbs dropped the bombshell that Northland and Tasman wouldn't be dropped, there was no mention of sustainability.
What's more, the unsustainable 13-week competition had been expanded to 15 weeks, a move that will only increase its cost base.
The $1.3 million a year that would have been saved by giving two teams the boot - and presumably all the other liabilities associated with running a national competition that can no longer be sustained on public interest alone - is now to be viewed as an investment. With the championship to serve primarily as a development competition, Northland and Tasman were probably retained as much for reasons of geography as the obvious inequity in just kicking out two unions when many others are failing just as badly. Their survival will ensure the competition's catchment area covers pretty much the whole country.
The major issue for the NZRU now is finding a way to keep the cost base of the competition down. A pared-down salary cap is one crucial measure but players' wages aren't the only issue. The prospect of teams such as Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury playing home matches at smaller, less-costly venues may become a reality sooner, rather than later.
Another problem for the NZRU is mollifying the larger unions, which have argued it is the presence of the smaller ones that has dragged the competition down. The likes of Canterbury and Wellington have long maintained that operating both Super Rugby and provincial sides are crucial to their viability.
Presumably the prospect of an expanded Super Rugby competition will be the carrot dangled to convince those unions of the merits of a scaled-down provincial competition.
But it would be no surprise if talk of a breakaway transtasman competition surfaces once again.
Either way, test match and Super Rugby is where real first-class rugby will take place from now on.
The change will hardly be dramatic. What used to be known as first-class rugby has already become second-class anyway. Anyone with eyes can see that.
