KEY POINTS:
Provincial unions perceived to be under threat of extinction hope no news is good news. Early last week the New Zealand Rugby Union confirmed the 2009 Air New Zealand Cup will be reduced to 12 teams but no decision has yet been reached on which two unions will be culled.
Tasman, given their impending split and financial strife that is so bad the NZRU is bailing them out this season, will almost certainly be one of the casualties.
Manawatu, Northland, Counties Manukau and Bay of Plenty have been touted as vulnerable but are still in the dark about their future.
"I'm hoping no news is good news," said Manawatu chief executive Hadyn Smith. "I have sponsors and board members ringing me every day saying 'come on, mate, just put us out of our misery, what is going on?' But I don't know, I haven't heard anything but I am more nervous now than I was waiting for the announcement to see if we were going to make the top division in the first place."
The delay between the NZRU board fixing on a 12-team competition and then agreeing which two teams to chop is an indication of the difficulty and magnitude of the decision.
Whoever is removed from the elite competition is effectively handed a death sentence as, despite the re-introduction of a promotion-relegation playoff, it will be almost impossible for any side to come out of the Heartland Championship.
And because the decision carries such a grave consequence, it is almost inevitable the NZRU will face a legal challenge from the union condemned to life in the Heartland Championship.
NZRU boss Steve Tew says the union's legal team have carefully combed the landscape and are confident they are on solid ground.
But strong counter arguments could be made by whichever union is dropped.
Northland, if they are axed, could question why they had to fight their way out of the old Division Two to hold a place in the top flight on merit while four sides - Counties Manukau, Hawke's Bay, Tasman and Manawatu - were elevated by the NZRU based on primarily off-field criteria.
The Taniwha could also show that their financial loss in 2007 was a blip, while Bay of Plenty have had to twice be supported by the NZRU in recent years.
The Bay can point to mitigating factors to explain their $750,000 loss last year - principally the collapse of Blue Chip, their major sponsor. They, along with all unions, could make generic arguments against the NZRU and the format of the competition.
The complicated formula used to work out the playing schedule in 2007 failed to throw together many key money-spinning encounters. Local derbies are the lifeblood of the provincial championship but last year the Bay didn't play their fiercest rival and Chiefs partner, Waikato.
North Harbour and Auckland were not given the opportunity to fulfil their much-loved and hugely popular Battle of the Bridge match. Did the format give every union a fair chance to maximise their revenue to offset a cost base that would have been in place for 12 months? If a legal challenge does come, there might also be questions asked about the special, one-off payment made by the NZRU to the unions in 2005.
To help every union deal with the increased costs of playing in a 14-team competition, the NZRU made criteria-based, lump-sum payments. But these payments were not tagged and it is understood that most, if not all, of the money was used to pay players.
That sent wages rocketing and players increased their expectation about what they were worth. One source said: "It became the norm for all Super 14 players to ask for $80,000 to play provincial rugby. It used to be about $40,000 but expectations were raised. If they didn't get that money, they would be off."
The NZRU is obviously sure of its stance and confident it will be able to say unions were trusted to spend the money as they saw fit and apply sound fiscal reasoning. That so many chose to overpay certain players was their business and made the individual unions the architects of their own subsequent financial doom.
Yet amid all this worrying by the vulnerable unions, a stronger emotion is emerging - frustration.
It appears, based on the results of the first round and the make-up of all 14 squads, the competition has finally arrived in the place it has been trying to get to.
Northland beat Waikato, Manawatu beat Canterbury and Counties Manukau beat Auckland in the opening round.
These results would have been unthinkable in 2006 and 2007.
Now the competition has evened out, with All Blacks being withdrawn entirely, Super 14 players being more evenly spread and the likes of Auckland, Canterbury and Waikato having to select greater numbers directly out of club rugby.
The vision for this competition was to have 14 teams of similar ability running on scaled-down financial models where players were semi-professional.
If the salary cap was lowered to $500,000 next season and the player contracting model adapted so Super 14 franchises could sign individuals directly, Smith believes the competition would be sustainable long-term.
His view is shared by Northland and other unions but not the NZRU.
