Super Rugby must cut teams to 12 to survive
July is always the most boring month for UK rugby fans, with nothing to keep our interest other than occasional Press releases telling us that ‘our’ club’s players will be the fittest they’ve ever been, and are possibly the fittest in the country/world/galaxy.
If you’re not daft enough to be taken, and the Premiership 7s don’t float your boat, then you’ve probably been watching Super Rugby.
If that’s the case then the first thing that will strike you is just how many empty seats you’ll see – the Allianz Stadium in Sydney holds more than 45,000, but there were just over 12,000 watching when the Waratahs beat the Highlanders, and attendance at the other quarter-finals was equally disappointing.
The plain fact is, despite the bullish words emanating from the competition’s organisers, Super Rugby is seriously, and maybe terminally, in decline, and we’re starting to hear rumblings from the Kiwi Press and public about it. The league exists on the back of the success of New Zealand rugby: it has the best franchises, huge public interest, and, of course, its teams win.
By way of contrast, South Africa and Australia had to shed franchises, and their crowds are declining. Between 2015 and 2017 Super Rugby attendances declined by almost 25 per cent.
The reasons for that are obviously complex: kickoff times tailored for the European and South African markets mean that there are evening games, and that affects family attendance, but the biggest thing has to be that Super Rugby’s structure is just ridiculous, and looks as though it’s designed to deter fans rather than attract them.
It’s a problem that looks virtually insoluble, and you have to wonder how Super Rugby ever got into this mess. It’s never been easy to manage franchises that are thousands of miles apart, and cover ten time zones, but in the early days they coped. Super 12 incorporated the ethos of a proper league: every team played every other, home and away, and punters instinctively understand that format – as soon as you drift away from it you’re in trouble.
Predictably, greed took over, we had Super 14, then Super 15, the conference system was introduced, and then the absolute madness that brought Argentinian and Japanese franchises into the competition – why cover just the ten time zones when you can encompass twelve!
All that keeps this shambolic league going is that the New Zealanders haven’t really got any sensible alternative to it – if they had the current setup would be disbanded in a flash.
What might just save it, would be reverting to a 12team format. Four New Zealand teams, three Saffers, three from Australia, the Jaguares and the Sunwolves, and you might just make it work – the Argentinian and Japanese franchises would have to accept that the price of being included is that they have to do the most travelling. If they didn’t fancy that then drop them – the 18 matches of a Super 10 would make the travel manageable, and would leave the southern Unions with enough rest periods to suit the way they organise their national teams.
What is really strange is that some Southern Hemisphere commentators have opted to lay the blame for the poor Super Rugby attendances on the TMOs – presumably they’re doing too good a job of highlighting refereeing deficiencies! Sadly, the bleating is having an effect, and it looks as though World Rugby will buckle under the pressure and curtail the TMO’s role – more dodgy results and unpunished cheating seem likely to be the way forward.
On the back of the weirdness that saw Billy Burns decide he fancied being Irish, we now have Will Addison, formerly of Sale, and born in Cumbria, treading the same path.
Apart from the daftness of the rules that allow this kind of thing, what on earth makes them think it will end well? Ireland have won the Six Nations three times in the past five years, and did the Grand Slam this year, so how can players who were at best on the distant fringes of England selection fancy they’ve got a chance of wearing the green jersey? Ambition is to be applauded, but really?