I tell you what, I am sick and tired of hearing the bleating coming out of New Zealand (Canterbury excepted of course, baa…) regarding the supposed poor performance of the New Zealand teams in this year’s Super 14 competition.

These noises are coming from the Radio Sport brigade. Those with nothing better to do than phone up a shlock jock and whinge.

I plan to put them to the sharp sword of statistics…  Bart’s colour-coded Super 14 table on the front page of www.thesilverfern.com is the blade I shall use, and the average finishing position is my method.

So, without further ado, the averages of the finishing positions after the 14 rounds of league competition.

First of all, Australia:

Brumbies – 5th
Force – 7th
Tahs – 13th
Reds – 14th

Sum of finishing places = 39. Divide by 4 teams. Average finishing position = 9.75.

Now, South Africa:

Sharks – 1st
Bulls – 2nd
Stormers – 10th
Cheetahs – 11th
Lions – 12th

Sum of finishing places = 36. Divide by 5 teams. Average finishing position = 7.20.

And finally, New Zealand:

Crusaders – 3rd
Blues – 4th
Chiefs – 6th
Hurricanes – 8th
Highlanders – 9th

Sum of finishing places = 30. Divide by 5 teams. Average finishing position = 6.00.

As you can see, as plain as the big schnozzer on your face, the New Zealand teams outperformed their Tri-Nations counterparts by some distance.

To those that espouse the ill-founded, weak, and illogical points of view that I mentioned in the first paragraph, don’t make me stick the cold steel of logic up your backside again. I won’t be so gentle next time…