A Christmas Wish
3By The Spotter
Christmas greetings to one and all. The Spotter stuck here in traffic from Jafaville.
Whether you have agreed with my arguments or disagreed with my diatribes (limiting the bouncer, anyone?) over the latter half of this year, cheers for taking the time to read and also comment, if you did.
I’ve recently been in touch with Sporting Santa to convey my one big wish for 2015 and beyond.
This being for the NZRU to cease this ridiculous charade of theirs of having Rugby’s ITM Cup premier division split into two separate conferences and to please revert back to a proper round-robin format.
Frankly, it’s all rather laughable for the boffins at headquarters to trumpet the wares of this competition as purportedly one of the world’s leading sporting leagues when no promotion-relegation takes place. And all this tosh in the past with murmurings about not wanting to sully the comp with smaller unions who don’t have the population base or big enough stadia to justify their place appears disingenuous in the extreme to these eyes. It smacks of kowtowing to the corporates and vested stakeholders.
Can you picture the mirth and indignation around Britain and beyond if the English F.A. introduced the rule that there wouldn’t be any more promotion-relegation for the Premier League? Period. Not even any play-offs. Imagine the fallout from that. They would be a laughing stock with some sponsors probably wishing to jump ship.
So come on NZRU, stop messing around with this competition and go back to the old format please. The majority miss it and are certainly no great disciples of your current format.
Good piece Spot but its all about money. The NZRFU currently operates on a giant Pyramid ‘top-down’ scheme where the only entity that makes or generates revenue is the All Blacks, with all other operations/competitions loss leaders that need topping up from that. In order to have one big ITM Cup teams would have to be culled out as 14 teams means a longer (i.e. more expensive) competition with a 13 week Round Robin and 2 (or more) weeks of playoffs.
The last time the NZRFU tried to cull teams, Northland and Tasman threatened expensive Court Action. The solution is so obvious no-one has even suggested it but it should be to completely wind up the Super Franchises and expand the ITM Cup to be played during the Super Rugby Comp window.
Of course this will never happen as the game is funded by TV (Sky) but my argument is a proper domestic rugby comp would be the equal of Super Rugby and attract just as much attention and revenue as the current Super Rugby comp does (which is dying a natural death due to its inherent flaws).
Thanks Post-P. You make much sense wise one. I too would prefer a better ITM Cup over the Super Rugby, but as you rightly said that isn’t going to happen in the forseeable, so what are we left with?
If they want a round-robin and 14 is too many, have one more season and the bottom 3 are automatically relegated and the top dogs from the Meads Cup are promoted. Tough bikkies- no submissions or protests. Following on the seasons after, it would just be automatic one up and one down.
And I’d love to see an F.A. Cup-style knockout club competiton, strongly funded by the NZRU. Of course I’m not naive though- all the early rounds would be played in regions and from the round of 16 or quarter-finals on, the home team first out of the draw has the home field advantage. The participants would be all the club champions from the previous season. And have a huge build-up to the final and lots of huge club patriotism on the day. It would be (in the words of Richie Benaud) “maaarvellous”, I can assure you!
The Spotter said :
Whether you have agreed with my arguments or disagreed with my diatribes (limiting the bouncer, anyone?) over the latter half of this year, cheers for taking the time to read and also comment, if you did.
signman said :
Merry Christmas all ! …as for the bouncer the only real solution is for batsmen to learn how to execute them properly, another problem too is because players have helmets on they think they can take eye off the ball a fair bit of the time, ridiculous stuff.