Argentina have been a welcome inclusion in the Rugby Championship. Anyone with an ounce of realism and knowledge of history will know the Pumas have done extraordinarily well to win one game, draw another and be agonisingly close in plenty more.
The thing is, though, for all their honest graft and endeavour, they just aren't a sexy side. They have zero glamour.
If Samoa were involved, they probably wouldn't be nearly as competitive but it would be a million times easier getting New Zealanders interested.
Argentina, on the other hand, perhaps because of the language barrier, don't seem to excite Kiwis.
From a rugby perspective, their set-up - of having the bulk of their squad based in Europe - is working fine. But they don't agree, and the latest news suggests that, as of 2016, to be eligible for the Pumas, players will have to be based in Argentina and contracted to the Super Rugby team.
The Argentina Rugby Union (UAR) are going to run and fund the Super Rugby team, which will effectively be the Pumas in disguise between February and August and then the Pumas not in disguise the rest of the time.
That's a massive risk. Many of the Pumas in Europe are paid well and settled. There are reports the UAR posted a surplus of US$17 million last year, which will be a helpful war-chest to lure talent, but still, there is genuine concern that whatever guise the Pumas are in next year, they are going to be outclassed in both tournaments.
The picture isn't any more encouraging in Japan - or indeed Singapore, where the Japanese team have proposed to play a few games. It's madness - two home bases thousands of miles apart and a group of cobbled-together rugby nomads to fill the jerseys ... won't work.
And the franchises in New Zealand know it. They have seen the declining trends around attendance.
In 2006, South Africa posted an average Super Rugby crowd of 34,000, Australia 24,000 and New Zealand 22,000.
By 2012, those numbers had dropped across the board - South Africa were down to 28,000, Australia 20,000 and New Zealand 16,000.
These figures most likely would have been worse were it not for the conference system where the New Zealand teams play each other twice.
These fixtures appeal to fans but not the players, who feel the physical and mental intensity is too much to endure eight times a season. So next year, New Zealand teams will play each other less and the difference will be made up with fixtures against foreign sides.
Chiefs chief executive Andrew Flexman says he hasn't given any detailed thought to 2016 yet, largely because his focus is on an already-challenging 2015 with things like the Cricket World Cup.
"I think it's fair to say that everyone in New Zealand is looking at ways to improve fan engagement, specifically the quality of the experience provided at games," he says. "We are doing a lot of work in that area."
Week one of Super Rugby kicked off with a sea of empty seats. With the Black Caps playing in Christchurch the following day, the Crusaders were resigned to a poor turnout. They got one.
It was the same in Auckland, where the Blues weren't able to host the Chiefs at Eden Park. They knew it wouldn't be a great crowd at North Harbour, and they were right.
Cricket could be blamed for all this. Starting Super Rugby a week earlier than usual to accommodate the World Cup could be cited as a factor.
But to look too hard at the periphery would be a triumph for missing the point - the problem is the core product.
TV has been allowed to dictate the playing schedules; jumping from 12 to 15 teams has diluted the quality of the overall playing pool; the format has suffered from not being a true round-robin; the rules remain unfathomable and inconsistently applied; stadiums, with the exception of the Forsyth Barr, don't have cover; the food in stadiums is mostly crap and expensive and maybe most damaging has been that the biggest name players have been allowed to drift in, drift out and skip the bits they don't fancy.
Add all that together and that explains the 30 per cent drop in average crowds since 2006.
Franchises can hardly be relishing next year when they are going to have to try to persuade people to buy tickets to watch a random team of unknown Japanese-based players who are probably going to see keeping the score under 50 points as a moral victory.
Blues chief executive Michael Redman says attendance at Blues games over the past decade shows the perceived quality of the opposition and performance of the hosts are critical.
"That is something we have been conscious of and have been trying to change so that, regardless of who we are playing, we still have a core audience.
"That's a challenge for us and the code. We don't want the opposition to be a factor and, for us, it is about the connection we have with the grassroots and community game and the quality of the fan engagement."
Those who made the decision to expand next year can spin it any way they like but the risk of the competition pushing yet more people away is worryingly high.
