KEY POINTS:
League loves to create statistics and the stat of the week is the whopping 15 applicants lining up for the vacant Kiwi coaching position.
Some you will never have heard of. Others are more obscure than that. The Kiwis are boxing on with an undercard.
It's a funny game, league in this land, where administrative blunders get more print space than any actual games.
The New Zealand Rugby League gets extraordinary attention when you consider it is actually in charge of stuff-all. There are little old guys operating out of cupboards who run bigger competitions in Australia. To all but aficionados, these coaching aspirants are coming, literally, from nowhere.
Those you have heard of are probably former internationals who, in years past, have battled along as coaches and are making a last bid for glory.
One of the non-starters is the Warriors assistant coach John Ackland, who cycled past the other day on his regular trek from training.
"I'd rather coach the Pakistan cricket team," the former Kiwi forward replied when I asked if he was interested in the national job. "And you can quote me on that."
So I have.
Ackland's rationale? There are too many distractions faced by a Kiwi coach. Kiwi assistant coach might be the better job, Ackland suggested, in terms of actually getting to work with the players.
Certainly, being a successful Kiwi coach appears nigh on impossible. Through the ins and outs, and for whatever reasons, a report card covering most would read: SHOULD HAVE DONE BETTER.
We haven't actually had a really successful Kiwi coach in more than three decades. New Zealand has had the players to do at least a little better but bursts of early success are followed by inevitable disappointment and sometimes horrendous disasters against Australia.
There have been two Camelots: the Graham Lowe era of the 1980s and Brian McClennan's stint of the past two seasons. While celebrated, both ended in a crash and a flight to England.
Anyone who knew McClennan's record and pedigree also knew that he was the outstanding candidate the last time a Kiwi coach was selected. The NZRL tried like crazy to avoid the obvious until outside forces helped save their blushes. We entered the brave new world, chapter 27.
This time, however, there simply isn't an outstanding candidate - or not one that we've heard of yet. The decision is an absolute punt, which will be made by a panel of three former Kiwi coaches. This is a blind call involving the partially sighted sorting through the unsighted.
Ironically, many of the prospects come out of a system that has created the problem that will prove to be the next Kiwi coach's undoing: a lack of quality players in the key positions.
New Zealand is continually scratching to find starters at hooker, halfback, stand-off and fullback, let alone back-ups. This is why a major plank in the McClennan scheme involved a soap opera known as Persuading Stacey Jones Out of Retirement.
Going into the 2006 Tri-Nations campaign, McClennan was also forced into finding a makeshift dummy half. After the season-opening Kiwi press conference at Mt Smart Stadium, McClennan confided he had been flabbergasted at the lack of interrogation about the dummy-half dilemma. He looked a worried man.
At a pinch - and if the stars are all in alignment and if the Gods smile nicely and if heaven and Earth get moved in the right direction - Nathan Fien, David Faiumu, the reconstructed but frail Benji Marshall and Brent Webb will give the new coach hope in the key areas.
Even then, the Kiwis are surviving, just, largely on luck. Two of those players are Australian converts who found Kiwi allegiances after being signed by the Warriors. Even true-blue Kiwi Marshall appeared like magic, a rugby kid scouted by an Aussie league college.
There are a couple of New Zealand stand-off rookies running around in the NRL - Henry Perenara and Ben Roberts. Jerome Ropati also remains a prospect, although Warriors coach Ivan Cleary is clearly reluctant about using him in the No 6 jersey. But standout test men?
The Warriors tell the story of local league. They have five Australians - all contributing superbly - filling those key positions. One of them, Wade McKinnon, replaced another Aussie, Webb. Another, George Gatis, has been axed in favour of the Australian-raised Bradford man Ian Henderson, who plays for Scotland. After nearly 13 seasons, our only professional club cannot produce one local leader in a play-making position.
I'll cheer for the Warriors in any form as loudly as the next person. But are we really to believe that from all the footy talent in this country there is no one capable of progressing as their first-grade hooker, half or fullback. Surely not. The situation is actually going backwards.
For sure, the solutions may not be simple and NZ is always partially reliant on Australian club coaches. But simply blaming an excess of junior Polynesian power, the common excuse, is a cop-out. Honestly. The Brits have always been clever players but can't we at least match a Scottish hooker?
The Kiwis don't help themselves either.
McClennan, on the back of the 2005 triumph, had the breathing space to promote Ropati in the No 6 jersey last year. But he gave him scant chance and instead relied on the dead-end option of Nigel Vagana as a defensive stop-gap in No 6. It was short-sighted.
With Darren Lockyer sidelined, Australia are struggling to find a five-eighth up to their standards for October's one-off test and are considering bringing Trent Barrett back from England.
Their left-field options, though, such as Mark Gasnier or Greg Inglis, look a heck of a lot more promising than ours. They are brimming with choices elsewhere, to the extent that a brilliant dummy half like Robbie Farah struggles to make the test team.
The bottom line is this: Whoever wins the mad scramble to coach the Kiwis will face the same problems as McClennan, who worked for a regime so desperate that they fiddled the books to get Fien illegally into the Kiwis last year.
I won't pretend to have an answer but it's an issue the NZRL, which shows boundless public energy in chasing rugby desperadoes for its All Golds tour, should turn its full attention to. It may find that a lot of other problems will be solved if it can solve this one. Otherwise, this cycle of boom, bust, bust, bust, bust will continue.
So, the new man will step up soon, full of optimism. And then reality will strike.
The Kiwis are a high-powered machine with faulty steering. Now and then, they career all over the Australians. But most of the time they crash into the sidewall. Digging legions of Kiwi coaching candidates out of dusty files won't change that.
