The more things change, the more they stay the same.
When a national provincial competition was first mooted in the early 1970s, there were concerns about finances, too much power with the major unions and much behind-the-doors lobbying going on.
More than 30 years later not much has changed.
Unions are counting their pennies, smaller unions are bleating about not being looked after and you get the feeling there are plenty of telephone calls going on in the background, as it becomes survival of the fittest.
This week, the New Zealand Rugby Union announced its preferred plans for the Air New Zealand Cup in 2009.
It wants to drop two teams, to have a competition with 12 teams, a full round-robin over 11 weeks and semifinals and a final.
The competition would start later and finish in mid-November.
The bottom team would play the winner of the Heartland Championship in a promotion-relegation match, while the Ranfurly Shield holder would have to put the log of wood on the line in every match home and away, after four successful home defences.
Before rugby went professional, provincial teams in the competition would go on tour and midweek games were common.
The draw involved horse-trading, due to costs and traditional fixtures, and one year Manawatu played six games before Canterbury even kicked off its first match.
Unions were worried they could not afford to travel to games, and only sponsorship from Radio New Zealand got the competition off the ground in 1976.
Today, the competition is getting cut back because of financial concerns, after smaller unions spent heavily trying to compete against unions with deeper pockets.
They now find themselves struggling to stay afloat.
If anything, the national provincial competition, the Air New Zealand Cup, has become a victim of professional rugby.
The All Blacks are the first tier of rugby in New Zealand.
The second tier is the Super 14.
And the third tier, which is now becoming a distant third, is the national provincial competition.
It is up to provinces and the NZRU to make sure it is a strong third place-getter.
