Super 12 format with rests would deliver better rugby
With playoff places up for grabs and finishing order to be determined, you would have thought the final round of league play in Super Rugby would be exciting and absorbing, but instead it was all slightly underwhelming.
Sure, Sharks fans would have been biting their nails early on Saturday when the point of their team’s match later in the day against the Jaguares was thrown into doubt as the Rebels took a 14-point lead against the Highlanders. They would have been right to have been miffed had it remained that way though, for the Highlanders, knowing they had nothing to gain and had an extended round of tough playoff matches ahead, rested key players.
But then the Jaguares also rested players in the Kings Park match that determined the Sharks’ fate. Their selection resembled a second-string combination and made the Sharks win predictable.
You can’t blame teams for resting players. It would not have made sense for the Jaguares to field their best team at Kings Park as they knew they were heading to Johannesburg for their quarterfinal regardless of the result.
Super Rugby is a long competition and a chance to rejuvenate before the knockouts could make the difference between facing a three-week participation in the playoffs or bowing out in the first week.
There is the travel factor too. What wouldn’t the Sharks give for a chance to refresh ahead of their quarterfinal, which will be played several time zones away in Christchurch just seven days after their last league game.
There is a reason that there is no history of a South African team going to New Zealand to win a playoff fixture. Not that the Sharks deserve any help from the competition format.
It is right that the team that finishes eighth out of 15, and wins only seven games in 16, is disadvantaged.
Maybe, though, we would see better quality rugby in what should be the showpiece window of the season if the top two or four teams rested in the first week of the playoffs and the other four were made to play out for the right to enter into the semifinals.
Ideally in a 16-team competition the top six should contest the playoffs, with No 6 playing No 3 and No 5 playing No 4 in the first week of the finals series and the top two waiting for them thereafter.
But there seems to be consensus among rugby people that a return to the Super 12, with everyone playing everyone else just once, is the way to go. In that case, the old system of the top four teams advancing makes sense when the competition structure is revisited post-2019.
If it does go that way, the organisers should schedule a break of one week after the league stage ends. A playoff phase is supposed to be when a competition gets really interesting but in Super Rugby the travel factor makes it too predictable and the rugby is too tired.
It would also minimise the prospect of franchises making a joke of the final round of league play by resting their top players.
Even when the competition was the Super 14, there were instances when teams rested their top players in the last round, the most obvious example being the Bulls in 2010.
The Pretoria team were set to play the other form team in the competition, the Stormers, in Cape Town in the final round. It was an eagerly awaited game for the Newlands faithful but it was ruined by the Bulls, already sure of top spot on the log, resting their entire first-choice team in preparation for the semifinal against the Crusaders the following week.
In those days only the top four went through.
It worked for the Bulls. The Stormers beat their second string by 30 points in the Newlands match, but the Bulls thrashed the Crusaders and then reversed the Newlands result in the final at Orlando Stadium two weeks later.
If we go back to Super 12 there will be time to schedule a bye week before the playoffs. It would then also make sense to do away with the ridiculous conferencing system and just let the top four teams play off.
That the Lions get to finish second when they actually have fewer log points and wins than the New Zealand teams that officially end fourth and fifth is just idiotic.
Okay, so you run the risk of the playoffs just being a New Zealand affair, but so what?
Surely it would be better to motivate the other nations to lift their standards. Rewarding mediocrity doesn’t help the competition.