I sit here watching Taranaki dismantle Canterbury who are on their way to a 4th straight loss. Canterbury!!! What I was wondering about was why we have two divisions. Stay with me, this could get rather complex.
By my reckoning a Championship side (Manawatu, Hawkes Bay, Northland, Southland, North Harbour, Otago, and Bay of Plenty) has beaten a Premiership side (Taranaki, Tasman, Auckland, Canterbury, Counties-Manukau, Waikato and Wellington) 10 times. In other words the “second” tier teams have beaten the “top” tier teams. These results include Hawkes Bay beating Premiership leaders, Taranaki – their only loss to date. North Harbour beat Canterbury – 6 time defending champions and everyone except North Harbour beat Wellington.
My second piece of data are the points. By the way, Canterbury have just tied the game up at 23 with 10 to play. I guess you cant write them off!!
One assumes that the points count the same whether you play a top side or a bottom side. If that is the case then the top four would look like this:
Taranaki
Tasman
Manawatu
Auckland
(….pending the result of this game)
Hang on a minute here. Taranaki? Tasman?? Manawatu??? Auckland???? 1 side out of the 5 Super Rugby bases makes the semis. One. Uno. Un. Tahi. Eins. Ichi.
The next 2 teams would be Canterbury and Hawkes Bay, then the last two in a quarter final situation would be Counties and Southland.
Tell me why we need 2 divisions? What about 2 pools if the window is small? For teams like Manawatu it’s an absolute insult.
Canterbury now lead 26-23!! Time is up and Taranaki have it!!
Mike Fraser (the retardinpink) is keeping them in it. And…….Canterbury win!!!
mysportingvoice.com 