Is domestic rugby being undermined by the focus on the World Cup?
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KEY POINTS:
Hands up who knows what perdition means? Good for you. I had to look it up. When I did, dictionary.com told me perdition was: A state of final spiritual ruin, the loss of the soul.
Appendix B - uses - said: Appropriate when describing the 2006 Air NZ Cup.
Last year's tortuous competition structure of a two-pool first phase followed by a two-pool repechage phase plus a top-six pool followed by quarter-finals followed by ... ZZZZZZ.
If the establishment of the Super 14 was the first step on the road to nowhere for this country's national championship; and the introduction - under John Hart's regime, one seems to recall - of an enforced rest period for All Blacks during the NPC season represented a stop off for a burger at the roadside services in Bulls; then last year's ridiculous format was certainly the last step down the path to perdition.
A more soulless competition it would be hard to imagine.
The word perdition first gained airtime among the unlettered classes in 2002 when the prohibition-era gangster movie Road to Perdition hit the silver screen.
Tom Hanks played a kind-hearted family guy who happened to be a hitman. When his boss knocked off half his family, Hanks hit the road with his remaining son and just kept driving until he found a place where it rained a lot and no-one had much to laugh about, a kind of American mid-west Invercargill.
Surprisingly, New Zealand rugby's road to perdition led not to Invercargill or Westport, but to Mt Maunganui.
Sitting at a rain-drenched Blue Chip Stadium on a Saturday night watching Bay of Plenty's Steamers slog their guts out against Taranaki's nickname-less plodders for the grand prize of possible home advantage over Manawatu in the repechage phase was possibly the least stimulating night I have endured since being forced to watch In Bed With Madonna.
Sure, that may be harsh on the players who gave their all for their provinces that night, but it wasn't their fault they had absolutely nothing of interest to play for.
Whoever dreamed up last year's format should have been stuck in a small room and forced to watch re-runs of Wellington vs Manawatu until their eyes bled.
Then again, it wasn't all bad news. Try telling the folk in Blenheim and Nelson, who got to witness a decent standard of rugby for the first time in eons thanks to the formation of the Tasman Makos, that it was all a waste of time. Ditto Hawkes Bay and Manawatu, who also ... took part.
Having made a complete dog's breakfast of this country's national competition last year, the New Zealand Rugby Union's competition planners at least deserve credit for acting quickly to remedy the situation.
Gone are the pools and the repechages, replaced by a simple format of a 10-week round-robin followed by quarters, semis and a final.
Another potential advantage for this year's competition is the absence of the World Cup All Blacks at the business end of the competition. If some of the minnows discover in the early rounds that they can compete with the big boys, at least they won't have to worry about Richie McCaw coming back and pinching all their ball or Dan Carter kicking them to death in the playoffs.
If it helps create a level playing field, then the loss of the superstar All Blacks might not be such a bad thing. However, a genuinely competitive competition comparable to league's NRL won't be achieved until all of the unions can afford to spend up to the salary cap - something that still appears a fair way off.
For now, the big question is whether an expanded national competition devoid of top-tier All Blacks and running parallel to the World Cup will have sufficient pulling power to woo the New Zealand rugby public. If it does, then the competition could represent the first steps on the road to redemption.
This year's Cup could be a firm pointer to the future of the national competition of the national game - a genuinely interesting second-tier tournament where the superstars of tomorrow are groomed superstars for higher honours. But, if the competition lacks quality, if it is swallowed up by the World Cup, if no-one really cares, then the obvious question is: where to from here?
