It's unanimous...the Mighty Chiefs were ripped off big time..

Let's put the Chiefs' achievement in perspective, as the awards should not be a default setting to honour the national side's success.

Rennie took over a team on the rocks in his first year as Super Rugby head honcho. Last year the Chiefs finished 10th - dead last in the New Zealand conference with 10 losses.

After 16 years of frustration, despondent fans deserted the perennial underachievers. Those same supporters returned after a franchise record nine-match unbeaten run and witnessed a thumping 37-6 over the Sharks in the final. That's a hiding in anyone's books.

Rennie, piped for coach of the year by Steve Hansen, didn't shy away from hard selection decisions to reach that point, turfing out some long-serving players and injecting 13 new faces.

At the start of this season we had barely heard of All Blacks lock Brodie Retallick, or big prop Ben Tameifuna. And what about Sam Cane's continued progression; Tawera Kerr-Barlow's emergence and Messam's rebirth?

Sure, Wayne Smith and forwards guru Tom Coventry played no small part, but Rennie had the nous, vision and grounded nature to form those complimentary, challenging messages around him.

Hansen avoided the dreaded World Cup hangover, displayed innovation, honesty, impressive man-management skills and secured the Bledisloe Cup and Rugby Championship trophies in his first year in charge. Comparatively, however, he had the cream of the crop.

Then there's Conrad Smith's Super Rugby player of the year accolade. The inspirational, rookie Hurricanes captain inspired a raw group of players many expected to fall flat.

Without taking anything away from Mr Consistent, there is a school of thought the best player should come from the best team. On that rationale, Cruden was exceedingly unlucky.

Also, polarising second-five Williams has since gone to the NRL, but there's no denying he was one of, if not the, Chiefs' best and should have been nominated.

While these awards are arbitrary and will never please everyone, surely the Chiefs deserve more than a thanks for coming; the equitant of a participation certificate.

That seems to be very poor judgement in the case of the Chiefs - some recgition is necessary for their once in a lifetime achievment,   Since I do believe the Chiefs will have serious difficulties in 2013 and is unlikely to reach the play-off stage next year - they should have been given recognition.

However, one must recgnise that despite the win in the semi-final agsinst the Crusaders and in the final - the Chiefs actually lost too many games in the series itself and they did not end up top of the log - but second.    I think that may have counted against the Chiefs.

no problems with hansen over rennie and All Blacks over the chiefs though, we smashed the Boks in sowetto and its still my opinion that the Boks at home are the All Blacks greatest challenege and kept the wallabies and ireland points to zero in two test matchs, which is pretty amazing and hard to do, especially as the wallabies were the No2 ranked team in the world at the time.

they could have had a seperate category for ALL teams involved, and a spXV & ITM category, but que sera sera, im sure the chiefs and their fans would rather win the spXV over the best NZ team award any day of the week and twice on sunday.

congrats on Richie McCaw though, he was my player of the year too.