Europe move by Boks not so Super
Series split looms
AUSTRALIA’S 25-year association with South African Super Rugby clubs will almost certainly end on Tuesday when the general council of SA Rugby meets to vote on whether to send its four strongest franchises north into what will become the Pro16 competition.
After threatening for so long to switch its provincial focus from SANZAAR to Europe, South Africa finally is about to do the deed, though it has taken nothing less than a global pandemic to bring about this long-predicted outcome.
Certainly within South African rugby circles it is regarded as an open secret that the general council will vote to send the Sharks, Stormers, Bulls and Lions into what will become the Pro16.
Technically speaking, this arrangement is purely for 2021, in much the same way as NZ’s Super Rugby Aotearoa and Australia’s Super Rugby AU are also only holdover competitions for next year until the coronavirus crisis passes.
After that, supposedly, they will resume the 14-team Super Rugby series that, as SANZAAR members, they have committed to through to 2025.
At least, that is how it stands at present. The expectation, however, is that the SANZAAR executive committee will decide in 2021 to recognise that South African rugby’s future lies permanently in Europe, while Australia and NZ are likely to link up in a transTasman series.
Sadly, the only loser out of this will be Argentina
There was much consternation in July when NZ an
nounced plans to ditch Super Rugby and set up in its place an eight to 10-team trans-Tasman competition involving a Pasifika team, one from Japan and between two and four Australian teams.
The announcement was greeted with disdain by Australia which threatened to – and ultimately did – set up its own purely domestic competition.
But South Africa too reacted harshly. SA Rugby chief executive Jurie Roux accused the Kiwis of acting outside the terms of the joint venture agreement that is SANZAAR.
“If anybody kicked anyone out of Super Rugby, it was New Zealand kicking themselves out,” Roux said at the time.
But for all the threats of legal action, South Africa itself has teased SANZAAR for most of the past decade with threats of abandoning Super Rugby and heading to Europe instead.
Having found itself isolated by the COVID-19 pandemic – Australia and NZ had completed their competitions before the South Africans started – it began looking seriously at joining the Pro12 competition.
For a brief time, the Pro12 became the Pro14, following the inclusions of the two Super Rugby sides culled in 2017, the Cheetahs and the Southern Kings.