Southland celebrate their win after the Southland v Otago NPC match, Rugby Park, Invercargill. Photo: Michael Thomas/ActionPress
NPC final: Wellington v Bay of Plenty
Kick-off: Saturday 26 October, 3.05pm
Sky Stadium, Wellington
Live updates on RNZ Sport
Analysis - The NPC wraps up this weekend when Wellington take on Bay of Plenty, complete with a family-friendly afternoon kick-off.
The game will be the culmination of a season that's felt like a bit of a turning point for provincial rugby. The mood has been upbeat about a competition that's faced questions over its future, as rugby moves ever further away from its amateur past.
Unfortunately, that final will take place at the one venue that provides an almost perfect visual representation of the issues facing the provincial game right now.
Sky Stadium - aptly named because of how many people prefer to watch games on TV rather than actually attending - will be hit with the usual yellow seat jokes. That's taking nothing away from Wellington, who will head into the final as deserved favourites, but it does highlight how the challenges differ from province to province.
Fans during the Wellington v Waikato NPC Semi Final match, Sky Stadium, Wellington. Photo: Marty Melville/Actionpress
NZ Rugby general manager of community rugby Steve Lancaster said the topic was a "constant dialogue for us".
"We go through funding, and we talk about the situation across the provinces… the challenges and the opportunities are all fairly common, but every context is unique.
"You can't transplant a situation or scenario from Auckland to Palmerston North. So those conversations are ongoing. But ... some of the chatter over the last couple of years has really galvanised people around the competition, which has been really good."
A lot of that chatter - at least anecdotally - came from one soundbite that NZR chief executive Mark Robinson gave last year on Sky Sport's The Breakdown show. Robinson described the NPC's current financial model as "not fit for purpose" - however, it was generally taken to mean he was talking about the concept of provincial rugby as a whole.
In a classic case of finding an opportunity in every crisis, it feels like the increased interest this year may have been fuelled by fans either worried the NPC will disappear, or simply out of spite and mistrust for the national governing body.
Bay of Plenty's Leroy Carter celebrates after he scores during their NPC semi-final against Canterbury. Photo: Alan Gibson/ActionPress
Overall, the NPC this year has been a very good one, both on and off the field.
Crowd numbers in the provinces are up, the Ranfurly Shield narrative has been excellent and it's not hard to presume broadcast figures have trended upward the same way Super Rugby Pacific did earlier in the year.
But if you take Robinson's quote at the face value, like a lot of people did, is the NPC still fit to be part of the pathway to the All Blacks? Lancaster certainly believes so.
"NPC form was a major factor in selection of (the latest All Black) team. So that validates the competition," he said.
"The fact that you have All Blacks coming in and then coming out, what it actually shows is one of the really unique attributes of this competition.
"You've got guys who have been selected after three seasons of club rugby and they're playing in the same competition as All Blacks - that doesn't happen in the rest of the world."
Taranaki celebrate winning the Ranfurly Shield off Tasman. Photo: Evan Barnes/ActionPress
It does feel that, yet again, the health and perception of the NPC is a broadly accepted online poll on how the nation is feeling about the game in general.
It's a rather flawed concept in that respect - most of the notions of what provincial rugby should be are based on environments that have long since passed, and aren't ever coming back.
Lancaster, who played himself in the days when big provincial derbies would fill stadiums, acknowledged that.
"It just evolves, continues to evolve. And so I don't think we'll ever see a time where any part of rugby goes back to what it was. What we have to do is ensure that we keep it relevant, in the here and now.
"What we have at the moment, for all its imperfections and intentions, is a model that largely works."
People often forget that in its heyday of the 1990s, the NPC was only an eight-week regular season with straight semis and finals. It had the added drama of promotion and relegation between three divisions, but even then it usually featured the same teams swapping places each season.
If that system were to be reintroduced, it'd be a financial death sentence not only for the teams getting relegated, but the ones heading up into a player market they'd never be able to afford.
The NPC's future will be in the hands of NZR's decision-makers soon, but it is safe to say any changes will be around funding and not what the actual product and competition structure looks like.
"Long-term sustainability is the lens we have most concern for. It's about sustaining that competition so we can keep celebrating it in five years' time," said Lancaster - who added a pretty important reminder about rugby's overall financial situation.
"What I can say without any doubt is this: it doesn't matter how much money this game generates, we'll spend it, or we'll find a way to spend it. And we'll be putting the hand up for more."
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