Comment: After just a tick under three months since the All Blacks were crushed by France in Paris, today marks the start of the 2022 rugby season starting.
The Blues are serious contenders for the Super Rugby Pacific title, Jamie Wall writes. Photo: © Andrew Cornaga / Photosport Ltd 2021 www.photosport.nz
A number of leading players have used the short break to boost NFTs (non-fungible tokens).
But it didn't take long for the Super Rugby Pacific schedule to be thrown into turmoil and the whole New Zealand competition shifted to Queenstown for the time being.
Then a run of positive Covid tests has meant Moana Pasifika's already precarious start to the season is now a full blown crisis. Hopefully it's not a portent of things to come, so fingers crossed these things are what we can look forward to seeing instead.
Pressure on Blues
The Blues have to get it done this year.
The word 'stacked' doesn't quite do the Blues justice, with their squad looking even more impressive than last season. Especially in the forwards, where they are All Black-laden, youthful and ideally suited to the sort of open game that succeeds in Super Rugby.
There aren't exactly too many weak points in the backs either, so really now the pressure is on Leon MacDonald to go one step further and take this team to complete supremacy after they won the abbreviated Super Rugby Trans-Tasman last season. Mark down 20 March as their day of reckoning, that's when they (hopefully) roll into Christchurch, with the winner most likely taking home field advantage into the finals.
Prediction: Serious contenders and will act like they've already won it on their social media channels anyway.
Crusaders doing it tough - by their standards
Scott Robertson doesn't really have much left to prove as a coach, unless of course he's trying to convince NZ Rugby that he should be in charge of the All Blacks, but this season sees his Crusaders team effectively starting out with one arm tied behind their back.
Richie Mo'unga is apparently out for six weeks, which leaves a great deal of the Crusaders' hopes on Fergus Burke or Simon Hickey. You would think there will be enough firepower in the rest of the squad to compensate, but a look at their record shows a pretty stark statistic: in the astoundingly low total of nine losses in Robertson's tenure, five of them have been when Mo'unga has been missing.
Prediction: Will be silently fuming all year that they let Brett Cameron go, now that he's in the form of his life.
The Crusaders may not be at their best if Richie Mo'unga is on the sidelines for six weeks, Jamie Wall writes. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
No distractions for the Highlanders
At least, you'd hope not for the sake of the competition. Aside from Aaron Smith's phenomenal form, the big story around the Highlanders last season was their ability to annoy local residents with loud after match parties.
While it sounds like par for the course for a rugby team in Dunedin, it was serious enough for a significant amount of their squad to be suspended.
Now, with the team bubbling away in Queenstown, they have the advantage of playing on home soil for the foreseeable future, with big games against the Chiefs and Crusaders at Forsyth Barr Stadium. Most importantly, no social gatherings are permitted for now.
Prediction: They will have a party anyway and probably block their toilet again.
Chiefs fit and healthy
For the first time in a long time, the Chiefs enter a Super Rugby season with more or less a fully intact squad. So much so that Clayton McMillan has quite the job on his hands picking who will be in his starting XV.
Will Bryn Gatland or Josh Ioane run the show at first five? What is the optimum loose forward balance? Who pairs up with Anton Lienart-Brown in the midfield?
They all fall into the category of good problems to have for McMillan who, if he can pull off another overachieving season with the Chiefs, will probably find himself in the conversation for an even higher coaching job in the future.
Prediction: Sadly no more foul-mouthed post match sprays from Neil Barnes, who has left his assistant coaching role, but plenty of lip towards the refs from new co-captain Brad Weber.
Brad Weber likes to speak his mind. Photo: Photosport
Vultures circle the Hurricanes
Every season seems to be more about who has left the Canes than joined them, this year they have to overcome the loss of Ngani Laumape.
There are still very senior players down the spine of the team, with Dane Coles, Ardie Savea and Jordie Barrett all capable of match winning performances, but the loss of TJ Perenara for the first month will hurt. A team that used to have one of the best inside back combinations in the world is now going to have to get by with rookies and journeymen, but it is likely Barrett will move into first receiver more often than not to compensate.
Aside from those big names, this is a team with a decidedly blue-collar look about it, which at least harks back to the Canes' humble origins in the first years of Super Rugby.
Prediction: Will severely test the patience of their long-suffering fans, but then make up for it by somehow scoring the try of the season.
Moana Pasifika's uphill battle just got steeper
As if the new team's task wasn't hard enough, Moana Pasifika have effectively defaulted their opening game due to a Covid-19 outbreak. It's even more of a disaster than their only warm-up game so far, which resulted in a 54-point hiding by an understrength Chiefs team, as when they finally get to play it will be after a period of isolation that restricts how they can train.
The best possible outcome is that time passes very quickly to the point where they can take on some of the Australian teams.
Prediction: Right now it's pretty hard to predict anything other than that they'll be watching a lot of Netflix in their hotel rooms.
The rest probably won't be up to much
Bit of a stretch here but in this format of Super Rugby the Reds are technically the reigning champs, having won the last competition that involved Pacific island teams back in 1995.
Bad news for them is that the likes of Michael Lynagh, Tim Horan and John Eales have long since retired and it's unlikely that the 2022 side is going to be able to match their feats. Which is saying something considering they are probably the best hope of the Australian sides, but at least the Force have the excuse that they will be a road team for the whole season. Shout out to new boys, the Fijian Drua, who have won over plenty by looking good in preseason and launching their own brand of beer.
Prediction: The Drua become everyone's second favourite team for that last fact alone.