Aisle be back: 2019 Super Rugby draw and the second Test

As curious as it may seem – and there’s a lot that is curious about SANZAR – they’ve just released the draw for the 2019 Super Rugby season.

With the current competition in suspended animation and the Hurricanes yet to be confirmed as champions it feels a bit weird. Like announcing who you’re going to run off with, while you are still taking your wedding vows.

Anyway, the timing slap bang in the international window is pretty much guaranteed to create no buzz around the 2019 comp. Well done, we can’t have that happening.

Regardless of that, have a look at the draw.

First thing to note – there is no international window next year because it’s a world cup year. So it’s full on all the way. Good, I think, although no doubt there will be All Black camps for Okinawa to disrupt all the squads, except the Blues.

Second thing to note, the Hurricanes have a tough start. Two away games, beginning with the Waratahs and then some outfit called the Crusaders.

Would be lovely to walk out of Dodge with two wins, but not likely, especially since the Canes start most seasons like a teenager embracing the first day of the new school year.

Not much respite really till about round 9 when we have a bye – by which time will have played the Crusaders a second time. So it could get grisly fast if the boys don’t fire up quick.

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Hansen makes a few changes and gets cast as a slightly crazy risk taker.

Look we’re not talking the Baby Blacks here, although that turned out just fine.

I would have thought now is ideal. No-one would really weep if the gallant French nipped one back.

Of course the other theory, barring enforced injury absences, is that there might be the odd shot across the odd bows after that sub-average performance last week.

As to the endless debate about the red card, it turns out that with more camera angles, it was established the French player was worthy of a yellow, not a red.

So don’t blame the ref. If World Rugby is serious about empowering their whistlers rather than undercutting them a few days later, as they seem to like doing, then bring on more technology.

Have a citing commissioner sitting in the TMO booth with the TMO. Have them with more camera angles and sooner. It might slow up the resolution of the decision, but if it stops a red being pulled out when it should be a yellow, then would any fan really gripe.

Well, yes, almost certainly, but that is a different story.

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Fast Eddie Jones is increasingly resembling the black knight in Monty Python’s the Holy Grail, the one who loses a series of body parts while insisting it’s only a flesh wound.

He’s clearly lost the team - and it would be surprising if he isn’t dumped this year.

But Eddie insists these are the times he lives for. Never felt better. I guess you can be chipper if you are getting a sizeable payout for early termination.

Anyway, I am expecting the We Have Full Confidence in the Coach call to come soon from English Rugby. And the it will be Good Knight.

Kevin is a lifetime Hurricanes fan. He and his partner are on a two-year Volunteer Service Abroad posting to Vanuatu's Espiritu Santo island. He's working on a project to build a South Pacific World War 2 museum on the site of an enormous Allied base on the island. Check it out at www.southpacificwwiimuseum.com