Rugby: Super 14 Power Rankings

Each week the Herald on Sunday brings you the Super 14 Power Rankings, which tries to ignore the table - not always successfully - to assess the actual strength of each franchise. This week, an author swap sees the Sharks rise again and the Crusaders fall at the same time they won. What gives? Read on.

1. Hurricanes (up 3)
Cue your MySky up for about minute 32. Watch the Blues' Taniela Moa put in a fairly ordinary chip kick. Now look at Ma'a Nonu as he has two chances to go down on the ball to secure it and he simply doesn't want to know about it. Small blight on a great season.

2. Sharks (up 4)
Why, you ask? It's as simple as this: Rankings has an inkling the Sharks are the only team in the top half of the table who will win all their last three games. There's also a chance that theory has been blown out of the water by the Highlanders this morning. In which case Rankings is an idiot.

3. Chiefs (down 2)
Rankings imagines that Ian Foster, who appeals, perhaps unfairly, as the most ambitious of the wannabe AB coaches, spat his Special K all over his Dell Pentium when reading the headline in yesterday's Herald: "Henry's the last decent coach in our cupboard."

4. Bulls (down 2)
The Bulls are as good a reason as any for the Sanzar partners to pull their collective heads in and make it work. They are an other-worldly S14 presence and allow lazy journalists to reel off myriad cliches about high altitude and sons of Voortrekkers raised on raw meat.

5. Crusaders (down 2)
What is it about our blinkered rugby psyche that makes us believe the Crusaders are admirable for the way they grind out victories this season, yet the Waratahs are committing weekly crimes against rugby? Could it be the same reason the rest of the rugby world thinks we're arrogant so-and-sos?

6. Waratahs (up 1)
Which is not to say the Tahs deserve a heap of kudos. If they make the playoffs Rankings would maintain they are the worst team to do so since the 1997 Natal Sharks (who at least were entertaining), or the 2002 Waratahs.

7. Blues (down 2)
Steve Tew's explanation, uttered on the wireless, as to why bonus points were great. "The table would look a lot different this year if we didn't have them." Too bloody right. The right teams would be up the top and the hopeless Blues would be nowhere near.

8. Force (no change)
Whoops. It has just come to my attention that the sports editor, Rankings' direct commander, has just filed a column in defence of the bonus point system (p65). Even though he is wrong, please consider it the HoS' official stance on the matter and disregard the Blues' entry above.

9. Brumbies (up 1)
"I've really enjoyed my first two years ... and the reason I came to the Brumbies was the chance to play with [brother] George," said the recently re-signed Tyrone Smith in a release. Believable so far. Then this: "Kristin and I love living in Canberra." Know when to stop, guys.

10. Stormers (down 1)
"We have sat enough in a changing room that is totally quiet. We would like to sing again," said skipper Schalk Burger ahead of this morning's match. Here's a song Schalk, it's a little Tom Petty number: "Baby, even the losers get lucky sometimes/ Even the losers keep a little bit of pride."

11. Lions (up 2)
Look for the Johannes Burgers to have a sneaky strong end to this competition. Too late, obviously, to be anything other than window dressing but it might be enough to keep Ginge Henderson in fulltime employment.

12. Reds (no change)
Can you believe the readers south of the Bombays and north of the Brynderwyns are reading their Rankings and seeing the Reds at No 9? That's what you get when you try to put a little faith in one of the competition's most fickle franchises. As for you, just feel fortunate you live nearer to the printing press.

13. Highlanders (down 2)
Not sure any other franchise would get such a free ride in the media for its continued failure. Sure, they lose more than they win but there seems to be a convention that "Highlanders" must be prefaced by "brave", "plucky", or even "unlucky". How about, "sinking".

14. Cheetahs (no change)
You have to feel a little sorry for the Cheetahs, who were not only lumbered with the most unbelievably stupid draw

- no home game until round eight - but also had to face the Crusaders and Waratahs back to back. That would lull any team into sleep.