WATCHING the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity on television this week, I immediately thought of the state of Australian rugby. As you do.
Multiplicity is about a bloke named Doug who clones himself in order to make life better, and for a short time it works.
Then he clones himself again, and then one of the clones clones himself.
At which point the gene pool is running a little dry.
The first clone is belligerent, unshaven and always sucking on a beer. Clone two is neat, polite and very interested in floral arrangements.
And then there is clone three. He wears an aviator's cap, eats shaving cream and talks gibberish.
As clone two describes it to Doug: "You know how when you make a copy of a copy it's not as sharp?"
To which Doug screams: "OK, that's it. New rule, no more Dougs."
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And that's when I started thinking about Australian rugby.
I mean look at the Super 14 table right now.
NSW Waratahs are coming first. The Reds are off to their best start to a season for yonks and are nicely positioned in fifth place. The Brumbies have won one more game than the Reds but sit seventh on percentages.
And then down the bottom with one win from seven games you've got the Western Force wearing an aviator's cap, eating shaving cream and talking gibberish.
And the really scary thing? They're going to clone them.
When is someone at rugby HQ going to put their foot down and say: "OK, that's it. New rule, no more Dougs". Or words to that effect.
Sure Multiplicity was only a silly movie, but it still made a good point. There's only so many times you can copy something before it's not as sharp.
In rugby terms Australia only has so many players, and the majority of them come from two places, Queensland and NSW.
Developing those players doesn't come cheap. It's no coincidence that those two states have both gone broke and had to be bailed out by the ARU. It's also no coincidence that an Australian team hasn't won the Super 14 since the introduction of the Western Force four years ago.
The arrival of the new clone led to a talent drain from which the Reds are only just starting to recover.
Just in time for the arrival of the Melbourne Rebels.
Now OK, it's a professional game and you have to expect that players will go to whichever franchise offers them the best deal, but you only have to look at the Force to see that there is only so much talent to go around.
And if you needed any more proof just have a look at the Rebels' big signing this week - Stirling Mortlock.
No question Stirlo was once a terrific player. A battering ram who put his body on the line so many times for the Brumbies and Australia that these days he's held together with masking tape and super glue.
The Brumbies can't find a place for him every week; the Wallabies didn't want to pay him past next year's World Cup, but yet the Rebels are building a team around him.
Of course, they can't hope for Mortlock to be on the field too often throughout the term of his three-year contract, which will put coach Rod Macqueen in something of a quandary.
Macqueen, who worked miracles when he kick-started the Brumbies with a team of rejects and unknowns back in 1996, was openly critical of the calculated and callous way the Force decimated Queensland 10 years later.
Now he has to put together a squad that will be good enough, fast enough, to win over and keep the AFL-centric Melbourne public.
If the much-hyped State of Origin matches played in Melbourne over the years have shown us one thing, it's that Victorians will go along to anything once, if only to compare it - mostly unfavourably - to their game.
Still, at least in CEO Brian Waldron the Rebels have got the right man in charge. The former Melbourne Storm boss had only been over from AFL for five minutes when he was calling rugby league "our game".
It shouldn't be long before he's saying the same about rugby union.
Le's hope he gets the shaving cream out of his mouth first.
