Magpies fighting for their lost generation

If you really love rugby you'll be barracking for the Magpies to dump on Canterbury from a great height and for the Stags to spear Wellington's scalp on their five-pointer antlers.

Neutral observers will be twiddling the television off-switch if fat cats Canterbury and Wellington win this weekend's national championship semifinals.

Media cynics and armchair critics have carped that the Air New Zealand Cup is a sub-standard affair. But any competition where the Auckland aristocrats fail to make the top-eight can't be all bad.

What do the naysayers expect? Super 14 or test-quality rugby in a semi-professional arena?

The charms of a 14-team national championship are its geographical scope and its throwback to an era where most had day jobs.

Yes, it was denounced by big unions. But their squeals about salary cap curbs smacked of vested interests.

Yes, it has had more teething problems than a nursery full of bawling babies during a national Bongella shortage. But this season we've seen Tasman, Bay of Plenty, Southland, Taranaki and Hawkes Bay make the quarter-finals cut alongside Super 14 power bases Canterbury, Wellington and Waikato.

Now I'd like to see Canterbury's personable coach Rob Penney win a national title in his own right. But I wouldn't shed crocodile tears if Hawke's Bay won at AMI Stadium because they have been robbed of their rugby legacy.

The Magpies were a New Zealand rugby talent factory in the 1960s under All Black great Kel Tremain's leadership. Has there been a better midfield partnership than Ian MacRae and Bill Davis? (North Harbour's Walter Little and Frank Bunce, perhaps).

Hawkes Bay also had some splendid players in the 1990s. But Stu Forster, Josh Kronfeld, Taine Randell and Paul Cooke were wearing the blue-and-gold of Otago then.

For a generation, rugby players topped apple boxes, logs and wine bottles as the biggest export items through the port of Napier.

The new national championship has restored rugby pride in Hawke's Bay where people now stride the streets of Napier and Hastings in Magpies jerseys and where homegrown talent like Hikawera the Happy Hooker and Israel Dagg (no relation to Fred) can now stay home and make Super 14 status.

Imagine the hype in Invercargill if the Stags were to win the first division title.

You wouldn't be able to walk the wide pavements of Tay St without tripping over oyster shells and champagne corks (or stoppers from Speights' peters). You'd never wipe the cheesy grin off Mayor Tim's dial. The glare from his pearly-white molars could be harnessed to power the Comalco smelter.

Now, we, in the media, rarely use the words NZRU and wise in the same sentence. But it was a sage call by the national body to retain 14 teams until the almost inevitable advent of a 10-team trans-Tasman competition.

Vexed questions

Has anyone in the history of New Zealand team sport combined charisma, world-class playing ability, team ethic and leadership better than retired rugby league legend Ruben Wiki? (And don't dare suggest Tana Umaga or Sean Fitzpatrick).

If the New Zealand Maori were kind enough to let old Uncle Rube canter 60m to the try-line at New Plymouth on Sunday, why were they so mean in exposing the Little General (retired), Stacey Jones's defence?

If the current global financial crisis continues can New Zealand afford to host the Rugby World Cup? Is ploughing taxpayers' cash into the Eden Park upgrade fiscally responsible?

Will Silver Ferns coach Ruth Aitken ever be bold enough to start a test without 30-something veterans Julie Seymour and Irene van Dyk?

Surely a series against easy-beats England is a grand chance to blood a new captain and a young goal shooting duo.

Will new RadioSport morning host Mark Richardson's show be less sleep-inducing than one of his groundhog day batting innings?

- © Fairfax NZ News