The NPC format you won't see

BY SCOTT PRESTON

OPINION: So, the New Zealand Rugby Union has made a decision.

And from 2011, the country's national rugby championship will be two-tiered (or three-tiered if you still remember that thing called the Heartland Championship). The Premiership and the Championship. Seven teams in each. Determined on next year's final placings. Automatic promotion-relegation between the two divisions. A 10-game regular season. Six games within division, four games outside division. Semifinals and final.

We're all happy with that? We're all ready to sing 'Kumbaya' and chow down smores around the campfire with Jock, Steve and the Old Boys (oh let's not forget Rob Nicol)? This is what we wanted? Really?

Let's forget for a second the unmistakable shadiness in the timing of this announcement (I mean, really, what organisation announces something this significant via email at 5.52pm, just a couple hours before the start of its own major awards night? Just wait until the next morning. Why push it through? Has a whiff about it. Just saying.) and that this proves once and for all it was the lack of a collective deal and support from the Players' Association, and not the legal threats from the provinces, that deep-sixed the 10-6 split, and let's get stuck into this seven-seven split.

At first, you think 'OK, this appeases these people, and these people, and those people, it could work. We can work with this'. But when you scratch through the 'this-is-better-than-that-10-6-split-that-you-hated-so-much' surface, you'll see the Players' Association plan is as flawed as any of the others.

There will probably be more but right now, after digesting the announcement last night, there's three things I dislike about the current plan:

1) Only seven teams will start the season with dreams of winning the national championship. That's only seven fan factions day-dreaming about their captain holding the Cup aloft. Seven is a great number for a tennis tiebreaker, not for a national championship. This is cutting seven teams without cutting seven teams, which really is worse than the 10-6 proposal because three less teams are involved at the highest level.

2) With the 2010 placings determining the seven-seven split, it creates a feeding-frenzy situation where provinces will take every measure to ensure they're in the top seven. Exactly the situation that wanted to be avoided and the reason the NZRU's population/results/development performance formula was used this year. Sure there may be a lowered salary cap but the wealthier provinces will always be a more attractive destination. And who's to say the fringe provinces won't out-live their budgets in a push to guarantee themselves a spot in the Select Seven?

3) With six games against division foes, the four other regular season games come against teams from the higher/lower division. And how will they be decided? Well, teams will get to nominate them, of course. Yes, nominate them. Themselves. Nominate your own opponents? If only the All Blacks could do this at the World Cup (you're nodding your head, and it pained me as much to write that as it did for you to read it). Details of this process won't be confirmed until the first quarter of next year but the NZRU described it as an “innovative new process” and Canterbury CEO Hamish Riach confirmed a nomination process with The Press.

So, where to from here? Considering this is Plan C for the revamp over the last 12 months and that the provinces are all fought-out and just giddy they didn't meet the axe, this is probably what we're stuck with. Well, until the next players' deal is negotiated.

For what it's worth, here's a competition you should see but probably never will: The Original Teflon Plan.

(It should be noted I was working under some conditions when formulating this plan: All 14 teams were involved and we had a 12-13 week window for the competition. These are the realities. We don't like them but we have to live with them. If we didn't have to worry about the (insert number)-week window to squeeze the NPC between the Super 15 and the All Blacks end-of-year tour, we'd have a 14-team full round robin, quarters, semis, final competition and would've saved ourselves a whole lot of angst, petition-signing, website commenting, talkback calling and good ol'-fashioned Steve Tew bashing.)

THE ORIGINAL TEFLON PLAN

- All 14 teams involved, all teams in one tier, split into two permanent conferences – ala the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB (pretty established and successful leagues) - of seven. Initial analysis sets up the following potential conference line-ups (there is some leeway for difference of opinion and arguments to slight changes to the conference make-up but let's roll with this):

Waka Nathan Conference: Otago, Canterbury, Hawke's Bay, Manawatu, Bay of Plenty, Auckland and Counties

Fred Allen Conference: Southland, Tasman, Wellington, Taranaki, Waikato, Harbour and Northland

- The regular season would consist of 10 regular season games (as the Players' Association Plan calls for), so here's how it would unfold:

- Six games against the teams within your conference and four from outside the conference.

One of those outside-conference games would be locked-in every year against a close traditional/geographical rival and the other three would be on rotation. -If you look at the composition of the conferences, the rivalry games are already laid out – Southland-Otago, Canterbury-Tasman, Wellington-Hawke's Bay, Manawatu-Taranaki, Waikato-BOP, Auckland-Harbour and Counties-Northland (preferably all played in the same weekend – Rivalry Week – which would market itself and hook in the media and casual fans.

-A team would play three outside-conference teams one year, and the remaining three outside-conference teams the following year. So in a two-year cycle, teams would be guaranteed to play every team at least once. Because all teams are on the same tier, all points would count.

- After the regular season, there would be semifinals involving the two conferences winners and the two next best teams on points (this ensures a strong conference in a certain year won't be disadvantaged by only having two semifinals spots). Ideally there would be six or eight teams involved in the playoffs, tacking on quarterfinals. Twist my arm and a regular season game could be sacrificed to see another two or four teams involved in the postseason.

The beauty of this plan is it keeps everyone involved in the title hunt from start to finish, prevents an ugly bidding war between chief executives keen to save their jobs by finishing in the top-seven, side-steps the horse-trading lunacy that would eventuate from the teams-selecting–their-opponents process. Plus there's absolutely no reason this competition couldn't go ahead in 2010.

Sure it's not perfect. But then, perfection doesn't exist in this situation.

- © Fairfax NZ News