>> Nick Cain column
THE word from South Africa is that Super Rugby is dying on its feet. This sends an unequivocal message to the Premiership ring-fencers among the club owners – none of whom have yet stood up to be counted – that closed shop tournaments do not interest Rugby Union supporters.
The clearest sign of all is that South African fans, like their Australian counterparts, are deserting Super Rugby in droves. Stadiums the length and breadth of the once rugby-mad nation have voted with their feet and turnstiles at grounds have stopped clicking. The ‘product’ has lost its appeal, and the atmosphere at most grounds, once so vibrant, is moribund.
An article on the South African Sport 24 website cited the crowds at last weekend’s Super Rugby matches as desultory. The Sharks v Stormers match, a traditional Natal v Western Province derby which used to be a huge social and sporting occasion at King’s Park, Durban, was a damp squib.
The pitch car parks surrounding the stadium have lost their festival feel, and the match itself was played out in front of sparsely populated stands. I can vouch from my own experience of South African rugby over the years that those car parks were once the only place to be on a Saturday afternoon, with fans catching up with friends, firing up their BBQ’s (‘braiis’) and washing down steaks and boerewors with cold beer.
The top tier of the once intimidating ‘Shark Tank’ was closed due to lack of interest, with giant sponsorship banners replacing paying fans, who were also sparse on the lower tiers.
The news of attendances in other former South African strongholds like Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria and Newlands in Cape Town were no better. Loftus, scene of the second Test epic between the Springboks and the Lions in 2009, was virtually empty for the Bulls clash with the Melbourne-based Rebels despite the Bulls being on a three-match winning streak.
The Stormers, who are usually the best-supported of the South African franchises, have also seen an alarming decline in the numbers at Newlands this year. Only 18,000 fans turned up for their opening home fixture against the Jaguares, despite the Argentine outfit being tantamount to a national team.
Saracens hooker Schalk Brits vouches for the scale of the drop-off since he left to the Stormers to come to the UK in 2009. Brits told me: “It’s quite sad to see what has happened in Super Rugby. When I played for the Stormers we got 40,000 for every game at Newlands, whereas now they get 15,000 to 20,000 top. Either the product is not good, or the supporters are confused.”
He added that the current Super Rugby format lacks coherence and that it is too diluted by the time the knock-out stage arrives. “January to September is a very long competition, and there are too many breaks so that you lose momentum. You need a competition to build to a climax.”
Instead of bogus claims from SANZAAR officials that Super Rugby is in a sound state there is subterfuge around the gates at stadiums, with official attendance guarded like state secrets by franchises scared stiff to reveal the truth.
The feedback on South African fan forums has made their disenchantment clear on a range of issues, with pro rugby’s ever-upwards pricing policy for tickets and for subscription TV coverage of matches a recurrent theme.
Predictability of results is another bugbear, especially as Australian and South African sides now usually lose to their New Zealand counterparts at home as well as away. Whether this lack of competitiveness stems from all Super franchises having guaranteed passage into the following season’s tournament because of no promotion and relegation is a factor gradually beginning to rear its head.
The catch-22 of a lack of atmosphere at stadiums, and a cavalier attitude by franchises towards their support base – with fans blocked from meeting players – were well aired, while the laws and refereeing standards were also panned. The non-straight scrum feed angered fans there as much as it does here, and there were also comments about the game becoming “a bastardised version of Rugby League” full of guaranteed possession and predictable patterns of play.
Inevitably there were also comments about the decline of South Africa as a global force, with the Springbok player exodus to Europe and Japan the main factor.
Given the measure of this Super Rugby implosion this week I asked RFU chief executive Steve Brown what his reading of the Premiership promotion-relegation situation was after a recent PGB meeting at which the closed-shop brigade were expected to unveil their plans.
Brown said: “Promotion and relegation was not discussed at the PGB meeting. It was discussed before that in the public domain by the Premiership clubs.”
Asked whether he was surprised that given the tub-thumping for pulling up the drawbridge there was no mention of it at the meeting, Brown said: “A little bit. It did seem as it was heading that way, and I got the logic as well. The logic was about sustainability, and to create a sustainable investment environment for the Premiership clubs.”
I beg to differ. There is nothing sustainable about a closed-shop in rugby. Aspirational clubs with access to the elite tier through promotion-relegation bring a vibrancy and energy that the ring-fencers cannot emulate. Brown and the Premiership clubs only have to look at Super Rugby to see why.
“South African fans, like their Australian counterparts, are deserting Super Rugby in droves”