KEY POINTS:
It is more than a touch ironic that, having done their best to create a national championship with a genuine capacity to surprise, the New Zealand Rugby Union's honchos spent the weekend it finally came to fruition discussing how best to kill it off.
The shock 17-6 defeat of Auckland yesterday by Counties Manukau which followed Northland upsetting Waikato 18-10 and Manawatu pipping Canterbury 25-24, make it hard not to feel sorry for the NZRU. After all, they are only trying to save the unions from themselves. The Air New Zealand Cup is a financial basket case. If the NZRU doesn't step in, teams will start dropping out through natural attrition.
It is, however, not just the teams that will fold but the unions, bringing serious ramifications for the governance of the sport in those regions.
To stop the unions doing more damage to themselves through inflated wage bills as they chase survival, the NZRU decreed that relegation based on results this season was not an option. Given the shocks this weekend, it is tempting to suggest that is good news for Waikato, Canterbury and Auckland.
But the reality is that those teams will make the playoffs - Waikato possibly excepted - and, boosted by the return of their All Blacks, will make serious tilts at the title.
The minnows that pulled off this weekend's shocks might make the quarter-finals at best.
There may be the opportunity for the odd shock in the championship but a genuinely level competition is still eons away.
The empty seats in the grandstands all over the country were just as telling as any of the matches this weekend. There was little disguising the fact that the championship has already become a semi-amateur competition.
The only thing that needs to change is the size of some of the players' pay packets and the switch to a more sustainable, compelling format.
