Argentina has a couple of clubs in SRA, weirdly there’s also a USA based club. I wonder if there’s a a bit of friction between that comp and MLR. To be honest, I worry about the latter’s competitiveness given the age of some of the veterans still playing, and how many never would be Super Rugby players are so good in it. Having said that, it probably is about as good as SRA so a champions cup style thing ought to work for them if it’s financially viable.

Yeah I think an annual, limited comp would be good - though i’d go with URC, SR, Prem, Top 14 and it’d be great to find some way to include Japan League 1’s winner too. Though probably more than 2 games is too many.

I didn’t mean to say that SA didn’t add to Super Rugby - especially early on they were crucial to it, just to try to show that its not that they were really good that helped NZ, because they weren’t.

What NZR & Super Rugby needs to try to encourage is another team or two to play like the Blues & Brumbies - because especially the former played a massively forward oriented, direct and physical game - very much the DNA of South African rugby.

Do that, then Japan League 1 has so many better opportunities for NZ if we would just show a bit of humility and try to fix that relationship more. They increasingly have strong clubs, they are in the same timezone as NZ and play at fairly similar times of the year, it is about a natural fit for NZ & Aus as SA joining the URC is.

The vibe down here is probably a bit more nuanced, and the calls to have SA back are a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to less than stellar results so its hard to be sure how it might go down.

There’s a few things people could probably stand to calm down & reconsider, in my opinion…

Firstly, before the SA clubs joined URC Ireland were doing very well, and Scotland were definitely on the improve. Of the original nations in that comp Italy have improved - but mostly on the back of one club, so a tight integration similar to the Jaguares and Wales are dire. So correlation/causation etc its not necessarily true that presence of the SA clubs are making those nations better, nor is it true that the lack of them is why NZ has been struggling.

Secondly, people are really forgetting how bad SA’s clubs were in Super Rugby in the last couple of years before the competition fell apart due to Covid. In 2019 only 4 teams won more than 8/16 games, and none of them were South African. In 2018 it was both better and somehow even worse, where 4/5 NZ teams won more than 10/16, and no other club did with Waratahs, Lions & Jaguares all managing 9/16. And in both years the worse of the SA teams had negative points differentials too.

Thirdly, because of the time difference and South Africa’s challenges holding night games, the matches over there were at awful times and have almost no benefit for the broadcasters this side of the competition. To make it even worse, because of the expense of flying all that way the touring structure would see your home team disappear for 3-4 weeks so you would go a month with no match in your home stadium.

Well, double tragedy for me. In the wet on Saturday night and with Fakatava going out with an injury pre-game the Magpies got absolutely punished by Waikato. Nothing went right for them, and pretty much everything went right for the Mooloos.

Then that got compounded by those heathens Tasman managing to win their first Shield defence after taking it off us last weekend.

That’s bizarre; unless somehow NZR/Sky have sold the rights to show the NPC over in your neck of the woods (which sounds improbable).

Actually speaking of tasty matchups - Southland v Canterbury wasn’t one, but it was a pretty good match. Out of curiosity, does either All Blacks (NZR) or Sky TV YT channels allow international viewers to watch the highlight videos or is it all geo-blocked?

Sky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rr0B-S51Lw

ABs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KE06cr-DBk

No home games for me this weekend with Hawke’s Bay heading up to Hamilton - that’s a 4 hr drive and now its spring i’ve got gardening to do! I’m on call next week so will miss our home game against Taranaki but the following weekend we have a 2pm kickoff against Auckland - afternoon footie is the best so hanging out for that one.

No I think you have to make changes immediately, for NZ, losing to Australia this year is losing to a 10th ranked team and that is unacceptable.

The reality NZ faces is that the game at the lower levels is hollowed out economically and basically a drag on NZR as a whole; this has led to NZR focusing more & more on the top end. That has coincided with a major push into elite rugby schools which in the long run is reducing our player pool. Basically if you don’t get into one of the top 20 or so schools on a rugby scholarship you won’t get into an academy and won’t get a pro contract.

So we’re now relying on a smaller group of academy prospects who’re identified when they’re 16 to somehow become international quality players by competing against each other in the Super Rugby reserves competition and/or competing against ever weakening Australian teams. Its an NZR problem as much as an ABs coach problem.

I put a passively cooled GT1030 in mine and its doing the decoding & tensorrt detection for 4x 1080p cameras just fine, based on its current load I expect I could add another 4.

I couldn’t tell you if that specific Amcrest camera will work, but I have 2 of the recommended ones on the frigate docs (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B083G9KT4C/) and they work.

Nope, i’ve not played since I picked up a back injury in early high school. I got dumped on my head in a ruck near the end of the season when I was 14, physio’d all summer to repair the bulging disk in my back only for it to go again half way through the next season. I finished the season out, and physio’d again - but its just an injury that keeps coming back even now, 30 years later :)

NPC has been great these first 4 weekends in NZ; so many fun games to watch. I know a lot of the rest of the world will never get on board with it, but the way NZR have adopted the rule interpretations and got referees to keep the game moving has been so refreshing - even more so than Super Rugby was this year. So far the only big delay in coverage was last night’s Tasman v BoP match where a lightning storm knocked out the lights in Blenheim before kickoff :)

The SA v NZ game started at 3am in NZ and bc i’m growing increasingly anti international footie I didn’t bother getting up for it.

I caught bits of Auckland v Canterbury, Southland v Taranaki and watched all of Otago v Bay of Plenty then just the highlights of Wellington vs Manawatū - so much good footie this weekend!

Final match of Round 3 is on Wednesday with Canterbury hosting Hawke’s Bay.

Absolutely cracking first match in the Hawke’s Bay Ranfurly Shield defence against Northland!

That article is a bit more sensational than the NZ coverage of it. Basically how its portrayed down here is MacDonald having had so much head coach experience now realising that he’s not fitting in with the team as well as they would have liked. The Crusader’s management are well known for early and up front feedback on how things are working - so its likely been brewing for a few weeks or more.

If anything the ABs could stand to drop another of the assistant’s yet, they’ve looked a little guilty of too many cooks and too much clutter in the first 4 tests this year.

I’m guessing there might be some away wins this week. Counties-Manukau have been really struggling and Tasman are stacked with Super Rugby players so shouldn’t fail.

BoP beat Waikato away in a local Derby in the first round, and are a solid team, so they might squeek past Otago down in Dunedin, and Taranaki as defending champs should be able to beat Southland - though the latter is much improved this season over years past.

Canterbury & Hawke’s Bay are in their storm weeks this round, the latter has upset Canterbury in season’s past but with only a few days rest, and away from home it would be a huge result if they pull it off.

One result was a bit of a surprise, and most of the rest of the matches were plenty competitive perhaps because it was quite wet most of the weekend which is always a leveller. Here’s the results of Round 2:

Lot’s to look forward to in Round 3, Hawke’s Bay & Canterbury hit their storm week the Bay have to play 2 of them away, whereas the Rams get 2 of theirs at home. But given we hold the shield that means 2/3 games in the storm week aren’t defences so I kinda prefer it that way even if we might not pick up all the results we want - particularly playing Canterbury down in little Britain.

Just to put that previous comment into perspective, I think the longest flight in 6 Nations is probably Glasgow-Rome yeah? That clocks in just over 3 hours.

The shortest flight for the Rugby Championship is Auckland-Sydney which is over 3 1/2 hours, Auckland to Buenos Aires is around 14 odd hours, and the quickest flight Auckland - South Africa is near 20 hours.

I guess you can see why getting the Jaguares back into SR is seen as feasible given how many years we had SA in the comp & had that nightmare travel schedule.