Super Rugby’s like buying a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert and finding that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are taking a sabbatical and a couple of roadies are filling in.
There’s a guy down the garage who, as it happens, does not swear he’s Elvis. But he does swear that the arrival of the new Super Rugby season is ‘‘humdrum’’. What a good word. Humdrum, ho hum, and who are we to disagree? Has there ever been less excitement about Super Rugby than at the start of this new decade.
Normally, I would be champing at the pen. New Zealand is always the most fascinating place on the planet ahead of a new season. There is so much talent, old and new, and so much knowledge and theory about the game. It’s a melting pot.
But this season there’s not enough heat to melt a bar of chocolate. There are several reasons for this. The first we can throw at New Zealand Rugby. When it appointed Ian Foster as coach of the All Blacks it might as well have flown a banner over the country proclaiming, ‘‘Super Rugby doesn’t mean a thing to us’’.
Oh, it waffles on about high performance markers and other gibberish, but how could NZR appoint Foster ahead of Scott Robertson if Super Rugby had any real value in its members’ minds? Foster never won anything at the Chiefs. And by the end of his tenure the team were going backwards.
Robertson brought on a whole new wave of young players at the Crusaders, created a happy environment, played some fabulous football and won again and again and again. But Foster got the job. Go figure.
Just as detrimental and equally astonishingly, NZR has decreed that the All Blacks’ rest periods that were installed to help win last year’s Rugby World Cup (it didn’t happen in case anyone was still wondering) will remain in place. Hello?
So, the All Blacks who are still part of Super Rugby are obliged to miss parts of the opening rounds and be stood down from two games, in addition to the built-in bye periods.
As my editor said, it’s like buying a ticket to a Rolling Stones concert and finding that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are taking a sabbatical and a couple of roadies are filling in. You end up with the Counterfeit Stones.
It is hard to draw any other conclusion than to say that the NZR is increasingly undermining Super Rugby. It hints that overseas experience is an asset on any All Blacks coach’s CV, and so Dave Rennie, the winner of two titles at the Chiefs, goes abroad and is lost to the game in this country.
But when Rennie does return, with his shiny new CV, he does not really get so much as a job interview because the top blokes at NZR have it in for him. And so to this country’s detriment Rennie will now be coaching Australia. And Wayne Smith is in Japan. And so is Jamie Joseph. And Joe Schmidt is stepping back. And Vern Cotter is somewhere else. And, and, and — NZR is very lucky that Robertson is still here.
The cycle of Super destruction just goes on. John Plumtree, who was developing the Hurricanes, has scampered off just before the season to join Foster at the All Blacks. Plumtree spoke noble words about fulfilling a lifetime’s ambition, blah, blah, blah. But the cynical among us think that Plumtree jumped ship, having lost Beauden Barrett to the Blues and Ardie Savea to injury, in order to take a post that now seems like a rubber stamp into the top job.
If all these shenanigans were not damaging enough to Super Rugby, there is then the matter of the top players. To say that Super Rugby has been decimated of its stars would be a colossal underestimate. Decimation is the culling of a tenth. Super Rugby is losing way, way more than this.
The biggest problem is in South Africa and, if I was a fan in that country, I would not be parting with my hard-earned rands. One of the usual lures of Super Rugby after a RWC is that we get to see many of the returning heroes. This is what drives many prosperous leagues around the world. But we are hardly going to see any of South Africa’s stars.
The Stormers have managed to pay out enough to keep Siya Kolisi, almost an obligation for South
African rugby, Steven Kitshoff and Pieter-Steph du Toit. The Sharks have held onto Lukhanyo Am and Makazole Mapimpi. But that’s just about it. In fact you are more likely to see top South Africans at the other Sharks, the one at Sale near Manchester. They have Faf de Klerk, Lood de Jager and about a 100 blokes called du Preez. It’s an exodus. Most of the RWC team are scattered around the world. Handre Pollard is at Montpellier, Cheslin Kolbe is in Toulouse, Eben Etzebeth is at Toulon, and Tendai Mtawarira has gone to Washington DC, of all places, to join Old Glory.
Most of the real old glory have gone to Japan, however. Malcolm Marx, Duane Vermeulen, Willie Le Roux and Damian de Allende, en route to Munster, are all way out east. They are joined in Japan by Brodie Retallick, Kieran Read, Sam Whitelock, David Pocock, Will Genia, Bernard Foley, Quade Cooper and Samu Kerevi. That’s not the end of the bad news. Israel Folau was of course ostracised by the nincompoops at Australian Rugby (I bet Rennie would have found a solution) and Barrett is on a sabbatical and won’t be joining the Blues until mid-April. Add to that the fact that the Sunwolves (Japan) are a dead team walking, as they will be expelled from the competition at the end of the year. Another coup de theatre from the brains trust at Super Rugby. How are we going to cash in on all that good will from the best RWC in history? I know, they answer, we will slash the Japanese Super Rugby team from our comp. It’s a shambles.
There are some sparks of interest. How will coach Warren Gatland go at the Chiefs? Will Tony Brown revitalise the Highlanders attack? Will wing Rieko Ioane find his form on shifting to centre? Can Aaron Cruden and Damian McKenzie bring some of the old razzle dazzle back to the Chiefs? Will the diminished Crusaders rise again?
And New Zealand is so rich in talent that there are always some young bucks who are busting to come through. We saw how potent the Japanese wings were under Brown’s coaching, so it will be fascinating to see how Jona Nareki and Tima Fainga’anuku go at the Highlanders.
Australia might also start to grow again. Rennie’s appointment as head coach promises to bring through a new generation. He confirmed the other day that if players are good enough then in his mind they are old enough.
So when the season kicks off on Friday with a match between the Blues and the Chiefs, I will be tuning in. But for how long?
The preservation and philosophy of the All Blacks has sold the ordinary fan short and I can’t see too many paying good money for a second rate product.
The Hurricanes in particular may struggle to attract an audience. Humdrum. I reckon the bloke at the garage got it right. We will be better off sitting in the summer sun watching the Indian cricketers blaze into town.
Now there’s a group of rock stars.
Robertson brought on a whole new wave of young players at the Crusaders, created a happy environment, played some fabulous football and won again and again and again. But Foster got the job. Go figure.