‘Super Rugby is an absolute shambles – they

Tournament that was the envy of the world is now in deep trouble, writes

The Super 12 was the southern hemisphere’s golden goose. Season after season, it produced rugby from the heavens. Every televised match was a must-watch for rugby fans either side of the equator.

Alistair Hargreaves, the former South Africa and Saracens lock, remembers getting up at dawn as a boy to watch the Canterbury Crusaders. “Even though I was South African I would watch all their games because they were so good,” Hargreaves said. “It was the most compelling tournament to watch anywhere.”

Yet the owner of the goose, Sanzaar, could not resist fattening up its prized bird. In 2006, 12 became 14. Five years later it became Super XV before the number was dropped altogether with the admission of Japan’s Sunwolves, Argentina’s Jaguares and a sixth South African franchise, the Southern Kings. The golden eggs are now rotten.

“Super Rugby is an absolute shambles,” Hargreaves said. “It is a case of people making the decisions just focusing on the bottom line rather than what is best for the game. Through no fault of the players, they are now playing in an absolute dud.”

You will not find too many dissenting voices. That the competition is in crisis and needs reform is indisputable. Sanzaar is expected to axe three teams in the next few days: the Western Force in Australia and the Kings and Cheetahs in South Africa.

So how did a competition that was so far removed from European club rugby that it appeared a different sport became so convoluted and confused?

The short answer is greed. The more franchises, the more matches, the more bums on seats and television income. Or so the thought went. “It was a classic case of trying to fix something that isn’t broken,” Nick Evans, the Harlequins fly-half and former All Black, said. There are pertinent lessons for authorities in the northern hemisphere to consider with a view to tampering with a successful product.

As more teams have been added so the quality has been diluted. In their desperation to export the game outside its traditional hotbeds, Australian and South African rugby unions stretched their playing pools far too thinly. The New Zealand franchises, always successful, have now established a hegemony, creating week after week of mismatches.

Attendances in South Africa and Australia have plummeted. For their opening game of the season, the Waratahs attracted a crowd of 11,964, less than half of last year’s corresponding fixture. South African stadiums are between a third and half full and it is estimated the country has lost four million TV viewers in four years.

Another equally damaging effect of so many teams is that the structure is now a mess. There are four conferences – two African and one each from New Zealand and