Super season will be intense
The 24th season of Super Rugby gets under way this weekend, promising 19 weeks of highly competitive action as the southern hemisphere along with Japan serve up an appetiser for Asia’s first staging of the Rugby World Cup.
For most of the 500-odd professionals who will suit up for the matches to be played out across four continents, the focus will not only be on winning but also on earning a ticket to rugby’s showpiece tournament.
For some, a spot at the World Cup is no more than a pipe dream, for others it will be snatched away by loss of form or the cruel hand of injury.
A re-jig of some sort seems to be permanently on the drawing board at Sanzaar headquarters, but there is relative stability in a second year with the same 15team format and a contiguous season running from Friday’s opener to the final on July 6.
As at the World Cup, more success for rugby powerhouse New Zealand looks like the safest prediction.
The Super Rugby case is, if anything, stronger with the five New Zealand franchises having won 16 of the 23 titles since the southern hemisphere provincial competition was launched in 1996.
The defending champion Canterbury Crusaders have landed nine of those, and will Or so pros will take part in this year’s Super Rugby tournament over 19 weeks be strongly fancied to put together a three-peat of championships to match the one they managed from 1998 to 2000.
The 2016 champion Wellington Hurricanes have plenty of talent too, but they might lack the depth to mount a title challenge in their first season under John Plumtree.
South Africa’s Johannesburgbased Lions have looked the team most likely to break the New Zealand stranglehold in recent years, but they have fallen at the final hurdle in three successive finals.
The stream of players heading north to the riches of Europe at the end of each season has deprived the Lions of key forwards, but they again look like being the pace-setters in the South African Conference.
Inconsistency and the inability to reproduce their home form overseas have bedevilled the Durban-based Sharks, but there are hopes that they might be able to challenge, for conference honours at least.
The Stormers will have to do better than their zero wins outside Cape Town last year to compete, while the three titles the Pretoria-based Bulls won in the first decade of the century are fading fast in the memory.
The biggest challenge to the Lions may yet come from Argentina, where the Jaguares are in wait. —