KEY POINTS:
Some time today, around 130,000 New Zealanders will lace up their rugby boots.
The pre-match routines will differ vastly. At Sturges Park, where Auckland's dominant club side Ponsonby take on Otahuhu in a first round premier match, they will border on professional. Players will stretch, sprint, hit tackle
bags and run skill drills.
In the lower grades, a half-hearted hammy stretch, a couple of pot shots at the posts and bit of natter will suffice until the referee's whistle signals the start of a game that has long been a national pastime.
It's the way it has always been, the way it always will be. Or will it?
Away from the glitz and glamour of the pro game and the big city stadiums, rural clubs are fighting for survival as the game struggles to hold its ground.
The New Zealand Rugby Union pumps around $6 million a year into initiatives designed to boost the game at community level. Many of those are bearing fruit, but in some areas, particularly the more isolated rural towns, it is a losing battle.
Small-town rugby clubs, once the focal point of their communities, are bleeding players. Many clubs are dying.
In North Canterbury, the Hurunui club will not field a senior team this year for the first time in its history.
Glenmark, the club that produced legendary All Black Alex "Grizz" Wyllie and Crusaders - and now Australian - coach Robbie Deans, has been forced to merge most of its teams with Cheviot.
Wyllie has pointed the finger of blame squarely at the game's administrators.
"I just can't understand that something hasn't been done about it by some of the so-called heads of the union within the provinces or at the New Zealand Rugby Football Union itself," Wyllie told the Press newspaper. "It's bloody disgraceful the way the game's being treated. It's all about professional rugby - that's all they care about."
Not so, says former All Black lock Brent Anderson, now the NZRU's general manager of community rugby.
"We would say that we've already invested $24 million and will invest another $24 million over the next four years, and that would suggest that we do care very much," Anderson says.
"Community rugby is still very much seen as the backbone of the game - 99.8 per cent of rugby players in New Zealand are community players. They play for the love of the game and they represent clubs and schools in their communities."
It's not just North Canterbury that is suffering. In Marlborough, the eight-team Senior B competition kicked off with two of the four matches being defaulted because of a lack of players.
Anderson says societal issues, such as declining populations, changing land use and the mechanisation of farms, are behind the player drain in rural outposts.
"We can't make people live in some of those areas and play rugby. If people are leaving the district then there just aren't the people there to fuel rugby.
"It's not that the NZRU doesn't care, the people just aren't there. Things have changed in New Zealand. We have now got 1.5 million people living in Auckland."
Anderson's assessment is spot on, says Dion Gordon, who manages a dairy farm near the Canterbury town of Dunsandel.
Recruiting young Kiwis to work on farms has become increasingly difficult. Many of the farm workers in the Dunsandel district are Filipino or Brazilian, he says. "Filipinos aren't that big on the rugby."
Milking rosters meant farm workers who might be inclined to play rugby wouldn't necessarily have the time.
"My blokes might only get one day off on a weekend every third week. Rugby is getting killed."
Gordon says he knows of one "old school" farming family where both sons played for the local club every Saturday, but that was a rarity.
"There are some families where the rugby club is still a big deal and they all go down there every Saturday to watch and have a beer on Saturday night."
Gordon, who used to play hooker for the Dunsandel club, has switched to playing touch 10s in Christchurch. He says his job means he simply couldn't afford to get injured any more.
Not long after he quit, Dunsandel merged with nearby club Leeston.
The plight of rural rugby covers the country. King Country Rugby Union chief executive Bryan Dickinson says the region has bottomed out at a nine-club competition.
"As far as mergers go, that probably all happened a few years ago. From what I understand, King Country once had 26 or 27 different clubs or something ridiculous like that. All of the clubs struggle but I can't see any more folding in the short-term around here. I think we are at our baseline and it is now about consolidating what we've got."
Senior playing numbers in the region are stable and have been for some time, he says.
In Marlborough, despite the early-season defaults, senior playing numbers are on the rise.
"Our junior numbers are up as well, and that is without a lot of promotion," says Craig Morris, the recently appointed Marlborough area manager.
"We actually have a very good club competition. It is a very good standard. I would say it is buoyant."
Buoyant, perhaps, but far from insulated against outside influences. Another recent default, this time at U16 level, was due to a game clashing with a pig-hunting competition.
And the region's 2006 senior champions, Pelorus, a team based in the tiny outpost of Canvastown, have withdrawn from the top grade after being unable to find replacements for retiring players.
Another club, Moutere, is being propped up by Tongan and Samoan vineyard workers.
Not all rural clubs are struggling though, says Anderson.
"There are examples all over the country where the rugby club is still the centre of social activities in the district.
"You possibly can't win the battle in some places, but by putting good programmes in place and providing appropriate support, the clubs can continue to fill the role they've filled in their communities in years past."
Initiatives such as Rippa rugby - a non-contact introduction to the game for primary school students - have boosted junior player numbers 17 per cent in recent years.
But efforts to retain players at teenage level and beyond have been less successful.
"We've done some research on it and the most significant reason for [young] people to stop playing rugby was the need to work," says Anderson.
"Often they get that work on Saturdays and Sunday and after school in the week, and that is when we tend to train and play."
Rugby is aware it needs to change with the times. The NZRU's 2006 funding review admitted the game was "trying to swim against the tide of socio-economic and demographic change".
There are changes afoot. Massey University has started running 10-a-side evening competitions, while the Wanganui union is considering playing First XV and U19 matches at nights to help free up players' weekends. Other unions are investigating the use of artificial turfs so matches can be played every night of the week at one facility, rather than being scattered around different locations on Saturday afternoons.
City-based unions, too, are facing their own unique challenges, says Anderson.
"For instance, Asian immigration into Auckland - we've got to try to make the game appealing and relevant to those people when they don't have a past history or association with it."
The NZRU's community plan, which Anderson is in charge of implementing, describes rugby as "part of the fabric of New Zealand society" and despite the protestations of people like Wyllie, who watch helplessly as their clubs wither and die, Anderson is determined to see it remains that way.
"We want people to grow up and have a love and passion for the game. The best way of gaining that is for them to be involved in it."
