The Orange

Yep, it’s official.  At the moment (until Winston Peter’s brother threatens legal action), the NZRFU is still threatening to drop four teams from the NPC.

Mind you, we won’t hold our breath because as Stuff tells us, the NZRFU have chickened out before:

It has happened in the past – the recent past even – when the NZRU bailed out, under threats of legal action, on its decision to downsize the top grade in provincial rugby.

However, don’t hold your breath because nothing is ever like it seems in rugby.

Talk about turkeys and Christmas:

“The reality is the unions came to us at the beginning of the year and said this competition is in trouble, none of us are able to pay our bills and collectively we’re going to lost $2.5-3 million this year across the 14 unions, on top of $3m last year and almost $4m the year before,” said Tew in an interview with Radio Sport this week.

“Everyone agreed we would not get a unanimous view on what the competition should look like – but we did get a unanimous view on what the key factors for a successful competition were and which we should apply to the decision.”

These included a desire to have professionals in it, so it couldn’t start till at least the end of Super rugby; protection of the club rugby window; the need for a full round-robin, and semifinals format; that midweek rugby was avoided; and that it would all be done and dusted by the end of October.

“You apply these factors and you end up with a 12-week window maximum, 10 teams takes up 11 weeks, and that’s where we’re at,” summed up Tew.

Funny that our mates over at Save Our Teams don’t mention any one of these points.

Why stop at 14 teams?  Why not have 21 teams in the first division.

Perhaps the problem is that only half the current comp is making any money:

Tew confirmed that seven of the 14 teams in this year’s Air NZ Cup had forecast a deficit and that the competition simply did not stack up financially in its current format.

If you really want to save our teams, take your medicine and cut four to save the rest.