Bald facts: NZRU's new format fairer for all

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OPINION: The New Zealand Rugby Union's statement on the proposed two-tier, 14-team elite national provincial championship uses lots of weasel words.

Phrases such as "franchise contracting," "revenue sharing" and "notional values" have, lamentably, infiltrated the sporting argot.

But the line I like best reads: "2011 will see 14 teams split into two divisions of seven teams based on their on-field finishing positions in 2010."

That's as much music to cauliflowered ears as the equally sonorous "automatic promotion-relegation".

Is New Zealand rugby, at last, about to emerge from its Chums Club cocoon of entitlement to a culture of merit?

The new system is much fairer than the arbitrary on and off-field criteria designed to dispatch Manawatu, Tasman, Northland and Counties-Manukau to obscurity, rather than the underperforming Otago and North Harbour.

If you thought this year's Air New Zealand Cup was a doozy, then 2010 should be the most competitive campaign in its 34-year history.

If the new format was in place next year, we would see Canterbury, Wellington, Southland, Hawke's Bay, Auckland, Waikato and Bay of Plenty in the premier division. Taranaki, Tasman, Otago, Manawatu, Northland, North Harbour and Counties-Manukau would contest the second-tier championship.

All well and good. But how will the NZRU brains trust get the cross-division fixtures to work? Each team will play four sides from the other division, with matches to carry full competition points.

This sounds good in theory, but is full of fish hooks in practice. What if one team vying for the premier division playoffs draws Taranaki, Tasman, Otago and North Harbour and a rival gets Manawatu, Northland, Counties-Manukau and North Harbour? It hardly makes for a level playing field.

The NZRU has shamelessly annexed English football terminology with its adoption of premiership and championship names. They should just go the whole hog and forget awarding points for the cross-division games, instead moving to an FA Cup-style structure, adapted for antipodean palates.

Teams could be drawn out of Pinetree Meads' sweat-stained All Blacks cap to play a province from another division. The winners would advance to the Rugby Union Cup top bracket and the losers contest the Sean Fitzpatrick Plate, both grades culminating in grand finals.

That way, all teams would get a minimum of two games. Finalists would get three and we would get two more sudden-death grand finals.

There would be potential, too, for a championship province to go all the way to the Rugby Union Cup title in much the same manner that second-division Sunderland upset first-division superpowers Leeds United in football's 1973 FA Cup final.

For far too long, New Zealand rugby has let mediocre provinces off the hook. They had a token promotion-relegation system whereby the bottom team in the old NPC first division played off with the second-division champions at the end of the season.

This was rather like David being ask to battle Goliath without his slingshot. The first division team were, largely, full-time pros, the second-division champs enthusiastic amateurs.

Moreover, the game was scheduled a week after the division-two final, when the winners were still recovering, while the first-division chumps had had a week off to lick their wounds.

Come November next year, there will no excuses. The seven poorest performers will play in the championship. And from 2011, the premiership's wooden spooner will trade places with the championship winner.

That is the way it has always been throughout most of the football world.

The basement battle in the English premier league is often more absorbing than the battle between the moneyed elite for the title. It's hard to believe now, but Manchester United spent time in the second division without any long-term harm.

We should look forward to the day when one of our five Super rugby franchise base unions have to scramble their way back to the premiership.

So, in this season of goodwill to all men, we should congratulate the NZRU board.

That venerable body might move with all the alacrity of a geriatric tortoise. It might be more pragmatic and poll-driven than a recent former prime minister. But it has brokered a decent deal at a time when there seemed more hope of a positive outcome from the Copenhagen climate-change talks.

Some conspiracy theorists have already opined that the players are now running rugby's cutter. If so, all power to them. The players might have been acting out of self-interest in scuppering the NZRU's preferred 10-team elite premier-division proposal. But, in doing so, they have done New Zealand rugby a real favour.

The 14-team first division could not have continued much longer. It was financially unsustainable and the season dragged on too long.

But the NZRU's desire to cast four teams to the wilderness of an ill-conceived six-team "first" division was a crock and a sop to the big boys of Canterbury, Auckland, Wellington and Waikato.

- © Fairfax NZ News