Maro Itoje: 'It was all part of the master plan'

For all the doom and gloom around super rugby, its stats are very similar to the Gallagher Premiership with the exception of ball in play time.

And I'm totally down wiht that thinking in a lot of ways (though I'd like more sophistication as suggested), you don't want to offer each of those three players the same contract and have all three leavue, when you can decide to share that value over just two players and get them both, but that idea wasn't really about spending.

The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?

BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).

So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

This is all preuly argument based, first I don't think they need Mo'unga back so it's not like I'm going to campaign or argue for it, but second I think he did finally establish himself as the worlds best 10 last year.

That said, I don't think it will get as bad as you suggest. I say bad because I look at the sort of dominance of the NRL and even in other sports like football with the Premier League as being detrimental to the sport and fans entertainment. Once you look under the rock theres not a whole lot wrong with say NFLs approach, it is merely different.

But I still don't think it will happen, or atleast if this new league does kick off, won't be succesful, much like how the IPL hasn't been (it has very little value outside India I'd think).

What it shows is that refs have caught with what people had misconstrued as very disciplined teams.