Aisle be Back: Changes on the horizon

• By Kevin McCarthy

Another year and another reworking potentially of rugby competitions. NZR met yesterday to thrash out three options. If you haven’t seen them, they are (as far as we know):

• Adding two NZ teams to Super Rugby Pacific, restoring the competition to 12 teams.
• Cutting duplication by having the five main SRP franchises as centres for the provinces under their regions.
• And most radically, ditching Super Rugby, and returning to a national championship of say 8 to 10 teams.

The third option is apparently not originating from NZR, but the provinces.

The nostalgic amongst us probably like the third idea.  Tapping into the tribalism of the old NPC, and getting some star players back into provincial rugby, while freeing up the crowded calendar.

That’s the theory I guess, but I fear that ship sailed a long time ago. Would  star players want to necessarily ply their trade in a super NPC, instead of joining the sabbatical train. I doubt it.

I also doubt that this option would save money, and in fact might drive things more into the red.

Lastly, would a more insular setup actually help our international competitiveness? The just-completed tour of South Africa would suggest that the more we step outside our own playing-style bubble, the better.

We should know more in late October, when the board will take some decisions. Doing nothing won’t be among the options.

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The four-test series with the Boks lived up to what I had hoped, as I’m sure it did for many fans. There is just so much more on the line, the narratives get bigger, and the outcomes get more intensely analyzed.

After that, facing the Wallabies is a bit of a comedown.

As I’ve stated before, I’m an optimist for 2027. The All Blacks will have learned an immense lot from four intense challenges, and it won’t all  be  about where we need to catch up.

It was certainly brutal, and not surprisingly, the rejigged team in Baltimore had too much of a mountain to climb.

To have got the team within distance will be both frustrating and heartening. Frustrating in that they could not turn the first test win into a series win or tie, and that the Boks were able to impose their style increasingly across the next three matches.

Heartening, however, that a new coaching lineup got them that close and is walking away with no illusions about what lies ahead.

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The big fixture this week is the Black Ferns versus England of course at dear old Twickers, early on Sunday morning.

Coach Whitney Hansen is talking up the prospect of beating the English, who continue to clearly be the dominant force in women’s rugby.

Can the Ferns unleash something special, or will it be death by maul.

If they can silence at least 50-thousand England fans, that will be quite the thing.

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Will Eden Park have to bring in the spiritual cleansers, after lending rugby’s fortress to the Warriors. It all ended up like an ill-judged Air BNB booking.

The Wahs bought the crowd fervour, but not the winning style, albeit they did genuinely seemed to have been stiffed by the reffing.

The sad aspect was that by game’s end, the ref was getting bottled by some, well, people who should never be allowed to watch another Warriors game in person.

Rugby and League should be working together for mutual benefit in our

biggest city – especially given the Warriors knack of building a loyal, committed fanbase, that turns out through thick and thin.

But please, crack down hard on the dickheads in either code. You are not wanted.