Should AB's play in Air NZ Cup?

There are eleven All Blacks on Air NZ Cup squads for the first two or three rounds of the Air New Zealand Cup and the rest are conditioning until the beginning of the World Cup in September. I have to wonder if it would have been more beneficial for every All Black selected to play a few rounds for their respective provinces before beginning the conditioning program. There is alot to be said for real competition and I just wonder if this would have been the right way to get the boys in game shape.

Now that being said I know that the pool rounds for NZ are rather soft, and the real competition will start in the quarter finals if not the semis, so there is time to “get in game shape”. I still think a few rounds of the NPC would have gone a long way to get the players in the right frame of mind and then a few weeks of conditioning before the start of the pool games.