"The IRB are a bunch of old fogeys, with their heads up their arses and an unwillingness to move with the times.  If we don't turn professional, all our top players will go to league."  Ring any bells?  'Course it doesn't 'coz everyone who said is now looking with the benefit of hindsight on the short-sighted mental retardation that consumed them as they were swept up in the passionate, media-fuelled, braindead Northern Hemisphere v Southern Hemisphere jihad.  'Coz now, everyone is too busy wedging their own heads up their own arses and screaming like newborns that all our second and third-tier players are off to Europe and Japan.

Well fancy fucking that, then.  Interesting breed of animal this cranial-sphinctum.  It tends to inhabit pubs and talkback radio, proclaiming its vast knowledge on matters rugby yet pleading gammy leg, sore shoulders or "ongoing trouble with my ruptured pancreas" whenever invited to play.  It is closely related to the ethno-cranial-sphinctum, a Southern Hemisphere creature which wails blue murder when a totally pants player like Shane Howarth finds out he once ate a leek and is eligible for Wales (overlooking the fact that voluntarily becoming Welsh is a twisted form of self-mutilation), but which wholeheartedly endorses the practice of Selected Polynesian Player Crop Farming - a policy which ensures a healthy dollop of powerful brown players in the ABs.

I don't fire up about All Black rugby any longer and I have never fired up over the Super 12.  This makes me a bad person.  Anton Oliver thinks I'm a bad person because he speaks in ads about his passion for wearing the Silver Fern and all I see is the three stripes; cranial-sphinctum think I'm a bad person because I don't put provincial rivalries aside "for the national good of the game" during Super 12; a German sportswear manufacturer suggests I might be a bad patriot because I won't worship their brand; dads with kids think I'm a bad person because I swear at games; men in suits think that when I say, "I wouldn't sit in a corporate box if you paid me", that I'm just jealous; a national rugby union thinks I'm a bad person because they stick a bunch of disparate unions together under an inane moniker designed to inject soul and camaraderie into the set-up, and I won't support it.

Well allow me to retort:  the Silver Fern is rapidly becoming a marketing label indistinct from the three stripes; I have stood on the Onewa Domain bank in pissing rain to watch Harbour beat King Country and avoid relegation, when most of the rest of the Shore had given up on their side weeks prior; I don't like Adidas' clothes and I only buy clothes I like; I didn't see Dad and the kids at Taranaki when we played for the Shield, or at Hamilton when Waikato were dishing us up yet another healthy booting; I choose not to sit in so-called 'nice' seats or corporate boxes because the people who inhabit them are often either very boring or complete arse-heads; and part of having passion for Harbour is having an irrational hatred for Auckland and whilst some see this as pathetic, I would suggest that you can't manufacture and advertise 'soul', a la Super 12.  Besides, the entire culture of sport is irrational - why else do people enjoy watching others run, kick, tackle, punch etc.  Because it's fun and fun doesn't have to be rational.  

Passion in fans is elicited by an irrational love for a team and an irrational hatred of someone else's.  Imagine Man Utd joining with City, Everton and Liverpool to form the Nor-East Stallions.  True fans with any sense of history would say "stick your stallions up your nor-east passage, thanks"; Kiwi fans, when faced with a similar scenario and no real grasp of a sense of history say, "but it's for the good of the national side".  Professionalism is, in many ways, anathema to soul and passion but while individuals can be bought and sold, history and loyalty should not be.  Oh yeah, and sorry to burst the bubble, people, but our "national side" is now German-owned and whilst I am not proposing a return to amateurism, neither is it valid for people to wank on about the Super 12 "improving the lot of the ABs" like we should feel some strong sense of patriotism.  At least the NPC is still provincial in essence.  What was wrong with the four or five top unions entering the Super 12, perhaps with four or five draft players from unions outside the top?  Absolutely nothing, except the sponsors and promoters figured they might not get their products seen by a sufficient number of people. 

The fact is that when rugby signed on the dotted line, it also signed on the bottom line: money became King and NZ isn't exactly the Kingdom of Greath Wealth.  Harbour has suffered greatly from player exodus and, along with other unions outside the Super 12 bases, will continue to do so.  The NPC is dying because of the Super 12.  Why should Taranaki pig-farmers get up at 4am to deliver the slop when they can swan it in the Sorbonne with free accommodation, endless supplies of Champagne and up to 12 different French call-girls a night?

There's little point in arguing against professionalism now, because it's here to stay, but for the sweet love of Jesus, don't bitch about the diminishing player talent in this country.  However inadvertent it might have been, you wanted it.  Let's just hope the Japs and Yanks don't get too interested.  Not that I'll care too much: when everyone's pissed off overseas, I'll be getting my Harbour call-up.  Provided, of course, I return from my all-expenses OE in Scotland for Watsonians...