Super6 lived up to its name by building on best of grassroots
Levels raise across the board but it still may not be time for Super8
THE second season of Super6, which culminated in the Ayrshire Bulls’ 26-16 win over the Southern Knights in Sunday’s final, was a distinct improvement on the first. Not only did it actually reach a conclusion this time – the 2019-20 season having been abandoned before the play-offs because of the pandemic – it also, and far more importantly, achieved a higher general standard of play.
The final itself was an excellent example of that, with the outcome uncertain until the end as two utterly committed teams battled all the way. But you could easily argue the case for several other games being the most entertaining, with Stirling County’s 41-39 win over
Watsonians in week eight, for example, having been great value for neutrals, even if defence coaches everywhere might have shuddered at the ease of some of the scores.
What is more, few games were really one-sided. As several coaches insisted, this is now a league in which any team is capable of beating any other on its day, which has to be a good thing.
To an extent, of course, we should expect games to become more competitive when the number of competing teams is cut. The same happened in the Premiership, for example, when it was cut from 14 teams to eight way back in the mid1990s. Similarly, we have the right to expect an acrossthe-board improvement in playing standards when semiprofessional franchises are established and given budgets and coaches and other support.
That general improvement is to be welcomed, of course, but it is surely no coincidence that the two teams who reached the final this year are the franchise wings of the two most successful clubs in the land in recent years, Ayr and Melrose. The success of both has been built on strong off-field leadership, which has helped drive up playing and coaching standards.
In other words, for all that Super6 has been classified by Scottish Rugby as a separate, superior entity to the club game, its growth this season has been grafted on to pre-existing, flourishing grassroots operations at places such as Millbrae and The Greenyards. The aim at Murrayfield is to turn the halfdozen current participants into a Super8 as soon as possible, but if it is recognised that a strong club base is essential to a successful franchise, that would cut down drastically on the number of realistic applicants.
As it stands, Super6 includes three teams from Edinburgh but none from Glasgow. That is an omission crying out to be rectified, but it remains to be seen if either Glasgow Hawks or GHA, the city’s two Premiership teams, would be able to put in an acceptable bid. And if they and/or other clubs from the city opted to join forces, they would be lacking the mature infrastructure which has underpinned the Bulls and the Knights.
So any expansion may well have to wait a while. In any case, the initial half-dozen franchises have been agreed for five years, so, given season one failed to finish and the start of season two was delayed by the best part of a year, a period of consolidation may well be in order.
As for how the individual teams fared this season, you could say broadly speaking three should be pleased with their progress and the other three should recognise that a lot of work needs to be done. The Knights, after taking a while to find their feet back in 2019, were far more consistent this season and finished top of the regular table. The Bulls, as they have done so often in one-off matches, raised their game when it mattered most. And Stirling County found a good run of form which augurs well for the future, only losing the third-place playoff to Watsonians by two points.
Watsonians themselves, although the best of the Edinburgh clubs, have to be disappointed in a campaign which saw them set the pace but then fall badly off it. The injury which ruled out captain and stand-off Lee Miller early on in the campaign was a serious blow, but at other times they appeared agents of their own undoing as they relied far too much on their pack.
After being regular play-off contenders in the last years of the old Premiership, Heriot’s cannot be happy with finishing sixth. They could plead that they have stuck more faithfully to bringing through Scottish talent than some of their competitors, but there is still a sense that they are lacking direction.
Boroughmuir Bears, meanwhile, played some enterprising rugby but at times lacked a cutting edge. In scrum-half Kaleem Barreto they had one of the players of the tournament. If they can unearth a couple of recruits of similar calibre over the coming months, they may just have a bigger say in how season three pans out.
This is now a league in which any team is capable of beating any other