Countdown to death in the provinces

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OPINION: Not that far out from presenting ourselves to the world as a stadium of four million people, the emotional groundswell over the chopping of four teams from the Air New Zealand Cup is just about the last thing rugby needs.

The NZRU may need every page of the 35,000 signature anti-cull petition to mop up the blood on the floor after the cull is made on December 10.

What's a little weird is that the whole messy business wasn't a plan hatched by footy's politburo in Wellington, but by the majority of provinces.

If disgruntled fans overlook the subtle detail that, without NZRU handouts, the wild over-spending by some provinces a few years back would have driven them into bankruptcy, you have a public relations shipwreck on your hands.

Charm has never exactly been a strong point of the NZRU over the past 40 years, and justifying the chop of four teams would test the honey-coated slickness of a Bill Clinton.

"They brought it on themselves" and "it's what the provinces wanted" are basically the truth, but say either phrase out loud, if you're an NZRU official, and you'll look like a bully or a liar.

It might be an idea, too, for Jock Hobbs and Steve Tew to look vague or affect deafness if anyone presses too hard on the issue of a dropped first division side making its way back from the wilderness.

Sure, two teams will gain automatic promotion the next year, but that leaves two still adrift in the limbo of the new second-tier competition. Once you're mired in there for two years in a row then Bubba, you're never coming back.

I don't believe for one second that most NZRU board members aren't distressed that on their watch rep rugby in a province like, as an example only, Manawatu, could be killed forever.

But short of Bill Gates adopting New Zealand rugby as a pet cause, or a stroke of sheer administrative genius at the NZRU, then at least two of the 14 teams in this year's Air New Zealand Cup are about to become the tearful, booted equivalent of Old Shep being taken behind the barn by a shotgun-toting owner.

NOW LET'S thank the Lord for the recovery time afforded the frontline All Blacks in Italy before they play England (ho hum) and France (gulp) over the next two weekends.

The French showed against South Africa in Toulouse that, unlike our good selves, they have no fear of the South Africa lineout, and, as they did here in June, they have forwards who are so mean and ugly looking they'd scare their own children.

Add in a return to using slippery little jokers in the backline, and the All Blacks test in Marseille shapes as the defining game of the northern tour.

On the other hand, England's only hope is that the tactics of the men in white will send our backline into a boredom-induced coma.

THE SUPER 14 squads? Keeping in mind that the Crusaders were the best-performed New Zealand team this year against the Bulls juggernaut in the finals, and that was without Dan Carter, and that Zac Guildford will be on their wing next year, the second, that's the second, the TAB opens a book on the Super 14, put whatever you can afford on the Crusaders.

NOT EVERY story in Ali Williams' book Ali's Tall Tales is a ripper: shaving a journalist's eyebrow when he went to sleep on a plane would have been amusing at altitude, but at ground level is just slightly nauseating. Still, the majority of the tall one's tales are pleasantly self-deprecating, and very funny.

Williams' attempt, when a broken jaw prevented him chewing, to make, and drink, an avocado-bacon burger and milk soup, or the image of four All Blacks realising how they'd made dorks of themselves by waving back at Mariah Carey (she'd seen a really famous person, Jonah Lomu, behind them), would draw a smile from a pet rock.