Rugby: Pros and cons of the minnows' rise

There are a lot of happy people in Tasman and Taranaki as the unions seek to become the first outside ''the big five'' to win a national championship since Manawatu in 1980.

Has their success breathed new life into the competition? Robert van Royen thinks so, but Hayden Meikle is not convinced.

Van Royen says

As a born and bred Cantabrian, I can't pretend seeing Tasman slam the door on the red and blacks' six-year reign at the top of provincial rugby didn't hurt.

I also can't pretend I like the fact Taranaki, a team affiliated with the Chiefs, is one win away from being crowned the best in the country.

However, it's got to be good for a competition that, let's be honest, hasn't exactly been riveting this year.

Living in Dunedin, I know all too well how fed up people get with one team winning again and again, especially when it's Canterbury.

Come Saturday night, there will be a first-time winner, and that can only be a good thing.

The competition needs proof that smaller provinces can rise to the top and beat the big guns, and that's exactly what the two finalists have done.

The fact they knocked out Canterbury and Auckland, two heavyweights with 27 combined titles, in the semifinals is reason to celebrate, for most.

In a competition where, week in and week out, the costume of choice is a stadium seat, surely this will increase interest ahead of next year's instalment and boost crowd numbers.

Heck, if this doesn't boost interest, what will? Not a major union winning it, anyway.

Watching Tasman, a team that was in financial strife just six years ago, and Taranaki, a team that scored just 14 tries last year, rise has been a nice change to an increasingly dry and predictable competition.

Parity is what makes the NFL, for instance, such a good product. It's much more intriguing when it's not just a one- or two-horse race. Last weekend's semifinals were difficult to predict, and that's how it should be.

Perhaps, more than anything, the rise of Tasman and Taranaki gives others hope. Take note, Otago.

Meikle says

Look, I'm happy for the good folks in Tasman and Taranaki country. I really am.

Firstly, it is wonderful that Canterbury is not in the ITM Cup final. We hate Canterbury. All that damn success.

Secondly, it is always nice to see the less fashionable teams succeed in sport, and it does not come much less fashionable than the Makos and the 'Naki.

But let's face facts: a final involving Tasman and Taranaki is the ultimate proof, if you needed it, that a competition we used to know and love as the NPC is wrecked.

One minnow in a final is cause for celebration; two is cause for concern.

This is what happens when you take all the best players out, you cook up a farcical one-division-or-two-division-who-knows format that must be the worst in world sport, and you allow an awful lot of very average players to make money from playing the game.

The competition has been dumbed down, and simply does not hold as much significance as it once did.

Super rugby and test rugby now dominate the year, and the poor old NPC has fallen to a distant third in the pecking order. It is basically televised club rugby.

Did you notice how many players from Tasman and Taranaki, combined, were named in a (massive) All Black squad on Monday?One. The same as Otago.

And how many came from Wellington, the province that was absolutely awful in the ITM Cup?Seven. Rather proves my point.

Go ahead and cheer for Tasman (because of all the Highlanders) this weekend. But don't get carried away and think it actually means anything.

 

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