The Silver Fern

@canes4life Yeah, if they lose this week I think that's fair, it would be more unfair not to promote Naki they absolutely deserve a shot at promotion

@duluth Might be time to look to wrap the season up, cant see the situation improving in time to complete a season even with mid week games, more and more likely that more regions will be pulled into some sort of lock down, and whatever plans are developed are more likely than not to get interrupted.

Time to get some winners and losers for the season.

Sooooo, If we award an average points per game to try and develop a fair assessment of the season to date after 5 played games the table looks like,
Current
Ta$man 18 points
HB 17.5
Waikato 17
Cant 16.25
Auck 15
BOP 13
Wgtn 11

After this weeks games
Ta$man v Hb 18 - 23 points
HB v Ta$man 17.5 - 22.5 points
Waikato 20.4 points
Canterbury v Wgtn 16.23 - 21.25 points
Auck 18 points
BOP 15.6 points
Wgtn 11 - 16 points

Then next week Ta$man, Waikato, & likely HB & Canterbury into semi finals, final week after. Unless Wgtn beat Cant they are relegated.

Championship table is pretty clear cut, Taranaki and Manawatu straight into a final next week.

Sponsor update from HB Rugby, could be a much stronger NPC - hopefully..

"Mitre 10 Cup – There are some really positive discussions happening about this which is exciting for us. Several scenarios are being looked at with one sticking to the current format and distributed draw, secondly an option to establish a 14 team competition with a full round robin like the old days. There is a very good chance all Super Rugby players will be available from the start with the cancellation of the planned Super Rugby competition. All Black test matches are under severe threat so AB’s could be introduced and additionally the majority of players who were playing in Japan, France the UK etc have returned to NZ and indicated that they would be keen to play. We have been told that here are more than 50 players who have returned with the likes of Kieran Read (Counties Manukau) and Brodie Rettalick (Hawkes Bay) who would turn out in provincial rugby as they just want to play. Sky TV now don’t have the televised rights for cricket so can be more flexible on start and end dates to competitions as they want the rugby content for their viewers and the provincial competition is very important due to the ability to connect throughout the whole of NZ. "