And they’ve looked so good when BB is on the field, oh wait a minute…

Born in NZ. Moved to QLD when he was 7. That’s why he was eligible to play for the All Blacks. Enough there for Dutton to send him back if he ever misbehaves!

Jacko – I’m quoting the NZ information from here – https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/covid-19-vaccine-safety-and-approval/covid-19-assessing-and-approving-vaccines

Its not only approved for medical emergency use in NZ (see my other comment on this below). It has been formally approved. Long term effects – I don’t know. However at the moment we do know that the vaccine is effective for the vast majority of people, and that Covid has very severe outcomes for some people who catch it. I’m prepared to eliminate the known risk.

Jacko. In NZ the Pfizer vaccine has been provisionally approved (with conditions) for use in New Zealand.
This means it’s been formally approved after a thorough assessment, but Pfizer must give Medsafe ongoing data and reporting to show that it meets international standards.

Jacko. You are quoting the lower level, i.e.: after people have had a single dose of the vaccine. For those who have had both doses of the pfizer vaccine, a consistently high efficacy of over 92% was observed in the clinical trials across age, sex, race, ethnicity and people with underlying medical conditions.
As Carlos points out, someone is lying.

That would be Wayne Smith (64%)

Time for specsavers Phantom

but the turnover he did on our line was exceptional – Daugunu thought so.

I think BB is the best 10 in NZ but they dont want to play him there – probably because he’s not then.

Long term test career? He’s played 18 games for the AB’s and 3 of them were draws. Wayne Smith played 17 games for the AB’s and won 11 – 63% winning record, and I’m sure there are plenty of others who have played about 20 games and have a similar record. How about Jordie Barrett – shocking record (67%) – better not let him out on the park again.

Corne – I suspect you had your tongue firmly in your cheek when you wrote that comment, however there is truth often said in jest. I like the idea of NZ and Aus and SA all doing what works for them in a domestic based professional comp. To take a big picture view may also mean addressing global issues like a calendar that works across all levels of the game around the world. As an example, Mitre 10 Cup and Currie Cup (and other semi professional comps) played at the same time. Then the domestic professional teams play their own comp – 5, 6, 8 teams – with the top 2 moving onto a Champions Cup. Ways would need to be found to include Japan and the PI’s. Playing a Champions Club comp in one country each year (Japan, SA, Aus, NZ) would offer enough scarcity that tickets would sell well wherever it was held.
Following that the SH Internationals could be played, with a mechanism to again include the PI’s and Japan.
I believe the Champions Cup and the International ‘package’ would obtain sufficient broadcast funding to support the SH unions involved and the domestic comps can be self funded internally through separate broadcast deals and ticket sales. Each country can also structure their domestic comps without worrying or demanding what another does.

MV – The money you were putting into the SANZAAR pool was actually less than the money you were taking out. This is because NZ contributed more to broadcasting rights than both SA and Aus, and SANZAAR sold broadcast rights outside of its own catchment area.
SARU also renegotiated their internal deal and allocated more of it to Currie Cup.

CPM – the lions share of revenue for SANZAAR used to come from SA (up to 38% of the total) by the late 2000’s. However you can now forget the assumption that SANZAAR is still propped up by South African broadcast money: that hasn’t been the full picture for years.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/121523112/why-nz-rugby-could-now-rip-up-super-rugby

Thanks Peter – excellent article. I anticipate that SA, NZ & Australia will all realise that a meaningful local competition is the answer to building support domestically. In SA and NZ the Currie Cup and the Mitre 10 Cup provide a good starting point. Australia doesn’t have an answer yet but the obvious solution (to an external observer) is the NRC or a development of that.
The next step up is the problem. Do we continue with a domestic base competition, Super Rugby AU or similar, or revert back to multi nations SR. My preference is for a domestic based competition of say 6 teams and at the completion of that the top teams from each participating nation go into a Champions Cup style competition. In this way Japan, Australia, SA and NZ can all be involved, as well as PI countries. The PI countries could play their own version of the “domestic” based Super Rugby to find their reps. However this is where we get into the lots of travel / time zone differences / lack of interest area, and my solution is to either break the tournament into upper and lower groups and play off for the winners, or have a pool style tournament where the top teams from each of 4 pools plays semi-finals and finals. The key to it though is to hold an annual tournament played all in one country each year (you might want to initially restrain that to Japan / Aus / NZ & SA) then it creates an event to supply funds for participation and profits to be divided between each country. It would enable prize money for the top teams (an incentive to do well). If an organisation like SANZARJA (I just made that up) run the tournament and coordinate TV rights etc.. there would be no additional admin burden on the base countries. and share the profits with each country).
The important thing is to not forget the lessons of the last few months. A domestic based competition delivers the level of interest to ensure home crowds buy-in to Rugby as a sport, while an international tournament offers possibilities of funding for the participating countries to ensure they provide the necessary administration for the long term benefit of the game. Fortune favours the brave, and now is a very good time to rebuild the sport in our part of the world.

Wrong. It was a reaction to a new professional rugby league being developed by media interests that would have decimated the international teams of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia (to name a few)

2small2maul – I think the potential for Japanese companies to come on board as sponsors for Australians is huge, though this is dependent on how much exposure the Aussie teams would get in Japan. To put this in perspective, Qantas has had revenue of approx. US$10b per annum. There are at least 50 Japanese companies with revenue exceeding US$50b per annum, however there are only 16 Top League teams in the local Japanese competition. By playing a Champions Cup style competition (say top 3 teams from local Japanese, Australia, NZ, South Africa, and a couple of PI teams) with 14 teams the opportunities for exposure for Japanese companies may convince some of them to throw sponsorship dollars at teams outside their own club competition. It may also provide a funding model for the PI teams to participate.

1. I wasn’t talking about income – just player expenses, and the only part of that missing is third party payments. For all NZ franchises, player costs are exactly the same
2. I mention international players because you said “Rennie’s teams were very much mid table on paper”. All franchises have players come and go – the best just manage that better.
3. Proximity to Auckland is an advantage because its an hour and a half up the road and not a plane trip every time. The Crusaders have picked up players that other franchises don’t want and turned them into champions. Many of those were from Auckland. If a player can’t make a squad in his hometown and he wants to play top level rugby, then he will move. Look at the Highlanders for a good example of that. You think most of those guys want to live in Dunedin? Where you want to live and where you get to play are not necessarily a matter of free choice.
4. Heartland teams have got nothing to do with it. The Chiefs franchise has 3 Mitre 10 cup sides, the Crusaders have 2.
I get annoyed when people say how easy it is for Robertson because all the good players are here, and infer that all he has to do is front up each week to win another competition. The Crusaders are strong because of the work that goes into all levels of the organisation – all franchises have the same opportunity, some just take it better than others.

Equal budgets are the payments for the SR teams salary caps paid by NZ Rugby in equal amounts to each franchise. All other payments under the NZ rugby centralised contracting model are covered by NZ Rugby. No franchise has an advantage over any other.
Rennie simply didn’t have any of that. He won the title for the first 2 years he was at the Chiefs. In 2013 he had 20 internationally capped players in his squad. In addition the region has more NPC teams than the Crusaders; highly ranked schools playing in the top schools competition; close proximity to Auckland’s large population base. Despite that he couldn’t win another title in the next 4 years he coached the Chiefs.

JD – I think both coaches know how to get the best out of players, and this is reflected in the number of their players who moved up to higher honours. And maybe being the strongest on paper is a reflection of how good a selector Robertson is. A lot of the Crusaders players hadn’t won a title until he came along; he introduced a number of new younger players – https://crusaders.co.nz/news/1026-2017-heralds-new-era-for-bnz-crusaders, and this year, despite losing a number of personnel from last years champion side, his team is tracking pretty well!
Both the Crusaders and the Chiefs have the same budgets so I don’t buy into the inferior talent argument. Rennie had plenty of time (6 years) to improve the playing roster at the Chiefs. As an example, Robertson has in this year’s squad only 6 players who were at the Crusaders when he arrived.

Thanks JD – good article, and a reminder that a star team is often better than a team of stars.
There is one comment that I can’t let through though. Talking about the NZ under 20 team you state that Rennie was “three times better than much feted Crusaders coach Scott Robertson”
To start with Robertson only coached the U20’s for 2 years, however the missed title in 2016 was the only year he hasn’t won a title since 2013. In 2016 he lost just one game in charge of the u20s but failed to get his side out of the group stages of the World Rugby u20 Championship. Robertson’s performance as head coach with Canterbury, NZ U20’s and the Crusaders is 85 games, losing 12 – 86% win ratio. By comparison, Rennie since 2012 as Head coach with the Chiefs and Glasgow Warriors is 136 games losing 36 – 74% win ratio.
Dave Rennie is a good coach – his record attests to that. But Razor Robertson is also a very good coach with an exceptional record, and not worthy of cheap shots.

Micko – I agree that in normal circumstances the crowd potential is much larger in Australia, and we saw that with the Bledisloe game in Perth last year. The rationale behind my comment was there may be restrictions on crowd sizes for some time to come, and therefore the biggest crowd potential would be Auckland. Rereading it, I wasn’t at all clear on why I thought Australia would struggle to sell out a venue, so my apologies on that.

I found their stats since 1976 when the NPC first started. Played 421 won 293. Winning percentage 70%
If you go back further than 1976 the winning percentage is likely to be higher as there were more games against lower level opposition.

Fortunately they don’t have to use it very often 😂

Not true. In both games players run about the same distance. League players can go off for a break when they feel tired, and because the ball is in play for longer in league that would suggest that league players spend more time “standing around doing fa” than union players. In that case it would suggest that the league players wouldn’t handle the pace.