Aisle be Back: The NPC starting and Bledisloe 1

Truth is a pretty fluid concept these days in the modern leading countries of the world, but here in the backwaters, it’s still quaintly held on to.  

Which made me wince a bit for Vaea Fifita when he was quoted as saying maybe Steve Hansen wasn’t telling him the truth over why he’s been dropped for the upcoming internationals.  

The reason is supposedly that Fifita has played lock for the Hurricanes this season, when he’s seen as a blindside by himself, and the selectors.  

Except Jackson Hemopo was picked, and has the same lock/blindside profile.  

It’s a brave man who accuses the coach of the All Blacks of telling porkies. Especially one on the selection outer.  

Turns out it seems this was more a case of lost in translation  and the All Blacks have moved to contact Fifita and reassure them of why he’s being sent to toil his trade for the Wellington Lions, starting this Sunday against Otago.  

Well, one team’s loss is another’s gain, and a Fifita firing on all cylinders will be a definite asset.   In fact, the Lions squad looks an excellent one on paper and hopes must be high now that the side is back in the premiership half of the division.  

Then again, we felt the same about the Hurricanes this season, and that just didn’t translate in the end.  

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It’s déjà vu all over again at this point in the season.  

There’s always a story about the Great Australian Revival.  

There’s always someone in the Northern Hemisphere dissing the rugby championship.  

There’s always someone saying the haka needs to be dropped.  

Sometimes, like this week, all three arrive at once.  

So let’s briefly think about them.  

What about them Aussies? Logic tells us that if they are better in the Super rugby then they will be better internationally. Which makes a liar out of logic generally.  

Australia wasn’t really that much better this Super rugby tournament, and anyway, it doesn’t translate into international rugby, where you only have to find 23 to 32 players.  

On that basis, with a few more of their marque players back in the fold, then Australia will be a bit better this time. Bledisloe better? Well, wouldn’t that be great. But they need to fire their best shots this Saturday.  

What about that Rugby Championship. Actually, rugby scribe XXXX is right in that compared to the Six Nations, the RC is a bit of a fizzer.  

Not great crowds, not generally much uncertainty about who will come out on top. In short, little tension.  

But his argument is the RC is “second division”. He does some odd comparisons based on world rankings. Why is that odd? Because the poor rankings of the Aussies and South Africans could have something to do with their having to play the All Blacks so often.  

Then again, if you want to get tested against the best ahead of a World Cup, who ya gonna call? Not England, that’s for sure.  

And what about that haka? Actually, it does lose a bit by being used at every game. But as New Zealanders, we see it all the time. That’s not the case for overseas fans at the games. It is a spectacle and part of the richness of the game in the past 30 years.  

So instead of dropping it and further blanding the international game, why not ask the fans of the different countries whether they’d like to see the haka done when their team plays the All Blacks on their home turf. I bet that very few would drop it.  

As for home games, well, welcome to New Zealand and here’s the challenge.    

And then maybe the haka whining would stop.

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You may have caught an article last week that rated the all-time best Super Rugby sides.  

Of course it was the Hurricanes (with all of one title), outscoring those pretenders the Crusaders and the Blues. And of course it wasn’t the 2016 championship Hurricanes but the 2015 version, which won every game in the round-robin.  

No, that doesn’t make sense, although apparently, a very clever statistical formula called ELO does the heavy lifting.  

The only other ELO I know was the annoying 1970s band Electric Light Orchestra. When people still had telephone lines.  

ELO didn’t make much sense either then.