So was this shield match the lowest scoring shield match ever? Or was it the lowest scoring shield match where the defender has lost the log o' wood?

In the 1950s a score-line of 9-3 would be considered a bit of a blow-out.

I do like that suggestion. Currently any team that goes down will struggle to make it back up because they'll be moving down to an amateur division.

The rumours coming from the NZRU office [unsubstantiated at this stage] suggest the top-tier of ANZC is to have its salary cap lowered…

This is why i'm so keen on 8 & 8 as I think it really does solve all the bigger issues:

I do like that suggestion. Currently any team that goes down will struggle to make it back up because they'll be moving down to an amateur division.

So was this shield match the lowest scoring shield match ever? Or was it the lowest scoring shield match where the defender has lost the log o' wood?

Manawatu haven't made a loss – they've signed young players on basic salaries and developed them through the academy at Massey, and saved the surplus [according to Jason O'Halloran].

Weird, given others are making big losses why are Manawatu at threat then? Hasn't Canterbury lost $700k this year?

More and…

First off:

Teams like B.o.P, Manawatu & Tasman are coming out of the fiscal hole they dug themselves now only to…

Instead, they prevaricated and jacked up a system to ensure than none of the big cities miss out. My view has always been that if you can't, say, get 5,000 fans to Albany then why should Bay of Plenty who get 10,000 to every game be relegated?

The BOP averaged…

Yamis – Your thinking reflects what the NZRFU thinks, and to my mind it is hopelessly out of touch with the realities of NZ rugby traditions and culture. The game might be suffering in the massively over-exposed rugby markets of the main centres, but it isn't in the provinces.

Tom,…

The priorities are pretty weird when you think about it.

Super 14/5 – 5 NZ teams, loses NZRU $3m annually (ok, I have no reference to back that up, its just what I read somewhere else, possibly dropkicks.co.nz). Gets expanded to 8 games…

Hawke's Bay are peaking at the right end of the season and I, for one, am smacking my lips at the chance to humiliate an All-Blackless Canterbury at home in…

The rugby is awful, the talent too watered down, the mediocre players paid too much. Many of these guys are second division footballers on a good day and the first division of historically the best rugby playing nation in the world deserves more than a competition that…

1) They're basing their decision on the last 3 years of the competition, when it would seem that its only this year that teams have found the right balance in spending etc. Teams like B.o.P,…

Steve Tew being interviewed

I wince every time I see and hear that man being interviewed. He has an over-whelming propensity for speaking managementese and gobbledegook to such an extent that he makes David Brent look reasonable.

He cannot complete a sentence without inserting "going forward, "moving on", etc, into…

That is the beauty of the provincial championship--you can support other, geographically distant teams.

What's the line: I support Waikato and anyone playing Canterbury?

It’s the disingenuous way they’re going about it that’s the problem.

In 99% of competitions around the world they use the novel concept of the bottom teams going down. Leaving nothing to the shadowy hand of a central…

When I was just a sprout, my dad took me to…

If we were to give the Japanese the RWC and stick the 200 million or…