IN CASE YOU WERE ASLEEP...

Here’s our undiluted opinion on all the action from the last eight weeks.

Various universities started to think about o ering degree courses to Super Rugby fans to help them understand how the competition works. They said they would be looking for applicants once their top bo ns had themselves worked out what was going on. Expectations were high that the first course would be up and running by 2023. That won’t be soon enough to help the Blues make peace with the fact that coming into the June break they had enough competition points to sit seventh on the table. Except of course their real position on the table was ninth because it’s not possible for all five New Zealand teams to actually make the playo s no matter what. The ridiculousness of that hit home in May and early June when the Brumbies were rock solid on fourth place with less than half the competition points of the ninthplaced Blues. If that was stupid enough in itself it felt even more so given that at that point, New Zealand teams hadn’t lost a single game to Australian sides. Given that they only lost three games to Australian sides in the whole of last year, the situation was beginning to look untenable. Of course some of that discrepancy will be fixed by chopping Australia’s representation to four teams next year. Oh yeah, that’s right, they are going to stu that up as well. Progress towards a reduction moved at about the same speed as the Lions back row. Carrying heavy shopping. And now it looks awfully like it’s just not going to happen. That the Australians are going to say, ‘sorry, it’s too hard’. If they chop the Rebels as they say they might, word is it will cost them about $9 million. If it is the Force they try to cut, then they will take the Australian Rugby Union to court and fight a long and expensive legal battle. So what is probably going to happen is that the ARU will make it look like they are doing everything they can to fulfil their promise of reducing to four teams. But secretly they are playing for time, going through the motions to keep their Sanzaar partners happy but with no intention of actually cutting one team.