Super Rugby must regain hearts and minds of fans
If Super Rugby is going to win back its credibility and re-engage its lost fan base, it needs to focus on substance ahead of style.
A self-styled Super Round, such as that this weekend in Melbourne, isn’t a bad idea per se, but it feels as if there is more in it for the promoters than anyone else.
It’s not clear what having every game played in one venue does for the fan experience.
And herein lies the crux of Super Rugby’s issue; that at some stage in the past decade or so, it stopped thinking or caring about Joe and Josephine Bloggs and built a madly conceived, disjointed competition.
Decisions were ad hoc and made with one of two objectives in mind: to make money or to appease whoever was lobbying the loudest.
Nothing has been done with the fans in mind since 2006, when Super Rugby took its first wrong turn and expanded from 12 to 14 teams.
Since then, fans have been the voice no one around the board table wanted to hear. For too long, those in charge assumed fans wanted what they wanted.
No one asked fans if they wanted to
watch games on cold winter nights rather than warmer, drier afternoons, and no one has managed to explain why taking every team to AFL-mad Melbourne this weekend deepens the sense of fan connection.
The folly of alienating fans has left Super Rugby with a mountain to climb to re-establish itself as a financially viable, highly watchable entertainment product in the next decade.
Destroying a brand is easy, rebuilding it is arduous, and no one should be under any illusions as to the size of mountain Super Rugby must climb to regain its place as the world’s best provincial competition.
Gimmicks won’t win back the masses. Super weekends can wait until the competition has built a foundation of high value content being the norm.
First and foremost, that’s what fans want — good rugby, from good teams, the sort we saw in Christchurch between the Crusaders and Blues last weekend.
Marketing dollars and clever campaigns can’t sell a dud product, and so for the next year, decisionmaking has to be focused on strengthening the playing ability of all 12 teams.
That starts with New Zealand Rugby doing two things: firstly, scrapping the mandated, restricted playing protocols for All Blacks, and secondly, not agreeing to any more Japanese sabbaticals for leading players.
This business of pre-agreeing workloads for leading players made sense when the competition was longer and came with a giant carbon footprint that took players all over the planet.
But now we have 12 teams travelling no further than Perth, and instead of dictating to Super Rugby coaches how and when they can use their international players, maybe it’s time to trust them how to suit the needs of their team while respecting the welfare of their talent.
The cost of protecting the All Blacks has seen Super Rugby pay an unaffordable price and the balance needs to be redressed.
Granting long-serving All Blacks the chance to skip Super Rugby to
play a season in Japan is a variation of the same theme and fans find it hard to commit to a competition when so many of the best players appear determined to escape it.
There are other ideas to consider, too, such as changing the All Blacks’ selection policy to allow all those playing in Super Rugby Pacific to be eligible.
Beauden Barrett and Brodie Retallick were eligible to play for the All Blacks last year after skipping Super Rugby and playing in Japan.
But why stop there? Why not encourage those who feel they want an overseas experience to play in Australia and still be eligible for the All Blacks?
Such a scheme wouldn’t meet Robert Muldoon’s theory of raising the playing IQ of both nations but it would certainly benefit the Australians to have a few seasoned Kiwis in their mix.
If fans are placed at the heart of all decision-making, administrators will realise they have to consider all sorts of ways to encourage a more fluid labour market and in time a less restrictive commercial framework in New Zealand to allow the teams here to build more distinctive brands.
There is no easy or quick fix for Super Rugby.
What lies ahead is a battle to regain the hearts and minds of an audience that needs to be told it is important.