A quick look down the points table of both premier division pools would give us a top six that would consist of Auckland, North Harbour and Wellington from Pool A; and Otago, Canterbury and Waikato from Pool B.
Despite there being four weeks of round-robin preliminaries still to run, we're prepared to stick our necks out and predict those will be the top six qualifiers anyway.
But here's where it gets interesting, as that word repechage _ an ugly word, and not just because it was invented by the French _ comes into play.
Any team that ends up in a repechage isn't playing well. Get stuck in the repechage and it's pretty tough to mount a comeback. Come second, third or fourth in the repechage and you get to watch the rest of the season from the sofa.
Tasman are fourth in Pool A, so they would progress through into Repechage A with Manawatu, who are seventh, and the fifth and sixth-ranked Pool B teams, Hawke's Bay and Counties-Manukau.
Bay of Plenty, currently fifth in Pool B, would make up the Repechage B group with Taranaki, Southland and Northland. That would mean playing Taranaki twice in a season.
While the top six sides complete their round-robin and jostle for quarterfinal seedings over three weeks, each team in repechages A and B play the other teams in their repechage.
The winner of each repechage advances to the Air NZ Cup quarterfinals _ but then have to play away against the top two qualifiers from the top six.
It's all purely speculative at this stage of course but the picture's starting to become clearer.

With thanks to the Bay of Plenty Times