Not good thinking

From Stuff comes the news that:

All Black great Chris Laidlaw believes the crisis in Otago rugby highlights the need for provincial rugby to return to its amateur roots.

Not good thinking. Either Otago (and other amateur teams) will lose all its good players to (semi-)professional teams or we will see all teams being amateur and we are back to the bad old days of under the table payments to these "amateur players", which was one of the reasons for going pro in the first place.

Or good players head to professional teams overseas. Or the good players play only in the professional leagues (Super Rugby and the ABs) and we never see them at the provincial level.

Or some combination of the above. All in all not a good outlook.