To purloin that Aussie commentator Gordon Bray when the Super Rugby Finals bring down the Curtain on the Temporary Stadium at the old Canterbury A & P grounds at Addington and the Red and Blacks attempt to place the 31 to zip record in home playoffs on the line under Coach Rob Penny.
Now Last year was one to erase and the 2025 squad has surely done that in spades. Any team losing coach Scot Robertson, lock Sam Whitelock and play maker Richie Mounga was facing a reset of proportional degree but this year under the official attempts to speed the game up and some notable twists and turns has seen the Crusaders come first losers after round robin only to be promoted to top seed when the Blues smashed the Chiefs on the stroke of full time with a try. for a one point win.
One aspect of super Rugby 2025 has been the revelation that almost any team could and sometimes did beat any other team.
A late surge by Moana Paifica was only finally extinguished on the last weekend of round robin when the defending Champions, The Blues swept, make that crept, into the rather different top six for the playoffs where with a six team qualification allowed one lucky semifinal loser back into the finals and that elevated the Crusaders opposition Saturday night, The Chiefs having handed top seed over with that loss at home rose again to defeat The Brumbies back at home last Saturday and step in to finals.
My head tells me The Chiefs start as favourites as a team of champions but will a Champion Team thwart what is to be Clayton McMillans last post.
Rob Penny , silenced his many critics with guiding his team naturally in a land of agrarians well used to chopping tall poppies with a degree of panache and humility.
So whoever takes the title i has been a great competition this year and although I laud the protections in place to mitigate head injuries, the fiasco with Blackadder pulled supposedly for a mouthguard alert when even a blind man relying on his white stick might have tumbled the smack Scooter had received might have been the one to test did bring the comical to the fore?
No Minister 
The problem is that under current rules, rugby union has become a gigantic, one dimensional bore.
Maybe you hanker for the good old days when you had to clear the ground of afterbirths from the farmers lease and ewes lambing there because it was a nice sheltered overnight paddock, a referee too fat and slow to keep up with a 42 year old prop, and a ball that could weigh more than a new born baby when wet, and driving for an hour to a game and arriving car sick, yeah those were the days Johno. then some might see “evolution at work”.
How fortunate you are you are not compelled to take part either as a combatant or spectator, a few of us still enjoy the sport even played out in a lazyboy chair.
Perhaps some might even see your comment in exactly the same light you claim to see rugby c2025.