I'd sooner see a team of Mackintoshes and Hardies put up a good fight for local pride than see them win with itinerants picked up at auction.
Provinces shouldn't need to spend to the limit of a player salary cap to be competitive.
Their small population and limited talent pool are the kind of disadvantages that can inspire compensating determination.
There are plenty of imported names in the Highlanders this season but the team is not relying on their occasional flair.
It is hurling itself into every match with a spirit that is splendid and unrelenting. They might not be able to sustain the effort for three months but they have sustained it for three weeks now. You never know.
They will have drawn great motivation from the financial crisis that has brought Otago rugby to the brink of collapse.
Though the Highlanders franchise is a separate business, its finances too have been a worry to the NZRU.
The deal done this week to relieve the Otago union of its debts is not a lasting solution to the perilous financial position of provincial rugby at the moment, but it contains one promising element. A North-South match will be played at Dunedin's new stadium in June to help the city council recover some of the debt.
How good it could be, not just for Otago but for all of us, if an inter-island match became an annual event again.
When I was a kid the matches had a special appeal in the South Island. Back then the North had all the All Blacks and we had Fergie McCormack. The South went down valiantly nearly every year, but Fergie was so heroic in the face of the Meads, Tremains, Grays and Nathans bearing down on him that we always felt we had a chance.
Today the islands would be much more evenly matched. Canterbury alone would probably have beaten the rest of New Zealand in recent years. If the organisers of a revived inter-island match want to make it more compelling they could borrow an idea from league. An "island of origin" match would see all those rootless professionals reclaimed momentarily by the districts that nurtured them.
We'd be surprised to discover where many of them come from. Who knew, until a recent television documentary, that Canterbury's Whitelocks grew up in Manawatu?
Some of the elite do go home for the national provincial championship, which might help explain its lingering appeal in the professional era.
But the Super 15, designed for the television revenue that the NZRU spreads around the grass roots, has been losing armchair audiences and stadium crowds.
Loyalty, I think, is the missing ingredient. When the Rugby Union's contracted Super 15 players move around the franchises as readily as coaches, salary packages and opportunities permit, it's no wonder loyal supporters are hard to find.
When did you last meet a rugby fan who is as committed to a Super 15 team as the lifelong supporters of a British football club, or an Australian Rules team, or the Warriors for that matter? Cantabrians used to have that sort of loyalty to the Crusaders but even theirs faded a few years ago when the team was still winning.
New Zealand rugby fans reserve their undying commitment for the All Blacks alone. Interestingly, the All Blacks have to be loyal to the place they represent. They are not eligible unless they stay here.
To keep a good pool of potential All Blacks here we have the highly paid troupes in the Super 15 with their ridiculous names, garish outfits and players of no fixed abode.
Most of them seem to be spotted early, "poached" by a good rugby school, played in its first XV until they can land a place in a Super 15 development squad, then progress through national representative teams.
All of this happens completely out of sight of the average fan. The days are long gone when we could follow a local protege's promotion from club seniors to provincial representation and possibly higher.
But I think we all hanker for some local spirit. Watch the Highlanders tonight. It worrks.
