Wynne Gray: Expanded competition good for everyone but NZ

There were suffocating boundaries for Super rugby expansion.

South Africa refused to shift their lucrative Currie Cup programme and the Northern Hemisphere wouldn't alter their June tours to New Zealand and Australia. Those schedules were inflexible, we were told, though we have also listened to transtasman officials repeatedly condemn the calibre and interest from sides touring in June. You wonder if Sanzar really ever muscled up on those sentiments when they mulled over their expansion plans.

If not then they had to shelve the annual Tri-Nations tests, reduce their number, play them in alternate seasons or devise some other system for those internationals.

Having a Super rugby diet, then those same players swapping their provincial kit for test match clobber every year, has become a hackneyed programme. Internationals between the All Blacks and Springboks used to be sporting events surrounded by mystique and heightened expectation.Watching those matches now unfold at times without capacity crowds shouts out messages about overkill, indifference, prices or the impact of television.

Those months when the Tri-Nations will be played from the start of the new deal in 2011 should have been set aside for the conclusion of the Super rugby series.

That would have allowed a March start for the 15 team competition, even permitted that June delay for tests if that interruption is not scrubbed by then, and then run into a finals format.

And Sanzar should have ensured every team played each other instead of the planned anomaly of avoiding two sides before the finals.

If the Sanzar officials decided the Super series was more important for the enduring rugby fabric of the member nations then they had to make that competition stick at the expense of their test programme, especially one which had to be shoehorned around the Currie Cup.

It was only recently we heard NZRU sentiments that rugby in February was too early, that summer sports need to breathe before the Super series started. It was encouraging to hear those views before the NZRU was defeated again at the bargaining table. South Africa got their way with the schedule dovetailing around their plans, Australia gleefully grabbed an extra franchise base and an extended programme to challenge their rival codes and New Zealand got what?