KEY POINTS:
A late change to assessment criteria might have been the reason Northland finished 13th in the provincial review.
To determine which two unions should drop to the Heartland Competition, the New Zealand Rugby Union marked provinces in six categories, each with different weightings.
While the final standings have not been released, Northland and Tasman have been told they will not play in the elite competition next year - with the former believed to have finished 13th and the latter 14th.
The Taniwha are expected to fight the decision legally and might be able to exploit some ground around the decision to change how marks were awarded in the population category.
Unions were originally told any province with fewer than 100,000 people would receive no marks. The population category had a weighting of 10 per cent.
But Southland, whose population is less than 100,000, argued that ruling was arbitrary.
"We felt we had shown through our performances and attendances that having a population of less than 100,000 had not held us back in any way," says Southland chief executive Roger Clark.
"We felt it was unfair that we would be given no points. In the other categories there is a scaling system in place."
While Southland would still have received only a couple of points at most, it's possible that made a difference in where they finished in relation to Northland.
NZRU chief executive Steve Tew said he didn't know whether that would be the case as he had not studied the final standings in any great detail.
Those final standings have not been made public yet and nor have the unions seen where they finished - they have been told only how they scored but not how that compared with others.
"We haven't made a final decision yet," said Tew in answer to why the standings have not been released.
Tew said the union was mindful they were open to legal recourse, something that looks inevitable.
Whether the Taniwha will be able to work a defence around the decision to change the criteria will probably depend on whether the shift had a material effect on their position in the overall standings.
If Southland did leapfrog them as a result and would otherwise have finished in the bottom two, Northland might point out that sticking to the original criteria would have left only two South Island provinces in the elite competition next year.
As the NZRU is committed to running two Super 14 franchises in the South Island, they would want more than just Otago and Canterbury in the top flight.
