Public service announcement: New Zealand's first round of Super Rugby pre-season games starts tomorrow and the first competition match kicks off on January 31, a state of affairs that may cause some discomfort to those who feel the still very young year is slipping by too quickly.
But, rest assured, this year's competition starts much earlier than usual due to the need to have everything finished by the time the July test window rolls around (for the All Blacks it's Wales x2 and Scotland). And anyway, spare a thought for the players.
The casual observer may not be ready for on-field collisions all the way from Nelson to Fukuoka to Cape Town and Buenos Aires, but neither, possibly, are those doing the colliding, and it will be fascinating to see if the injury rate is worse as a result for the players who have effectively had one month wiped from their pre-season preparations.
On a related note, this is the 25th anniversary of Super Rugby, a competition which began with such promise in 1996 (with 12 teams who all played each other) and which now limps along in a confusing conference system serving for many as background noise before the serious business of the test season begins. Sometimes less is better.
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