Devlin

South Africa is in the same time zone all year round as, I'm pretty sure, unless they have daylight saving or, as France, they are always in the same time zone but they could change, give or take an hour or so with daylight saving and an hour or so ahead of the UK.

That makes it very easy to leave Super Rugby and then go to these Northern comps.

Yeah, I still think, and this has kind of been my theory for a little while in the limited functions and workings of my brain, that you have like a contract system where you have the 40 best players in New Zealand deemed by the All Blacks coach, those 40 players get to go play overseas and you can change that list, maybe take 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 15 players out of there and then put 10 to 15 new ones in there each year that that rolls over and

and you still have going on in the background is whether it's a super rugby or it's a jacked up NPC and you have the rest, you know, those 40 best All Blacks are overseas, you have the rest of the players in New Zealand in that jacked up NPC.

It's differing styles.

It's in the same way that you have a number of All Blacks right now in Super Rugby that aren't playing too well, but that come test season, they're probably going to be very valuable to Dave Rennie and the rest of the coaching group because test rugby is a different style and it has different demands to Super Rugby.

Yeah, but if you have a forward pack in the last 10, 15 minutes of a game that can at least win its own set piece and protect the ball at the breakdown and hold position, and then you've got three fresh players in your back line versus their one, and all of a sudden you're spreading that ball out wide, I like the sound of that.

But there's arguments pro and against.

What did the All Blacks do at Eden Park last year?

They beat the Springboks more or less at their own game and then the Springboks started to come back and nearly ran us down at the end.

I would think that a lot of teams, and this was a big thing in the NBA for a long time for any American sports fans out there, with the Golden State Warriors when they were just banking three after three after three and running teams off the floor, that teams get so caught up in trying to beat a team at their strengths.

Yeah, it's a good one.

So why don't you just change the script?

Because if they ever did that on us...

with the stupid midfield lineouts and their 7-1 bench split and then bringing on a new front row after only half an hour.

Why can't we then change the script on the rest of the world?

Because if you're simplifying things and even condensing the field, then you're playing into the hands of teams like South Africa, because that's what they love.

But they don't like it when you throw the ball around and you expand it the way the Hurricanes are playing right now.

Of course they will.

Of course they are.