Super Rugby will still be broken
Super Rugby's new format doesn't address any of the actual problems the league faces.
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Super Rugby will still be broken
Super Rugby has agreed a new format for the southern hemisphere quasi-club competition. As reported in the SMH:
The 12 franchises will face each other once before playing three additional round-robin matches. After a 14-game regular season, the top eight will progress to knockout quarter-finals.
First will play eighth, second will play seventh, third will play sixth and fourth will play fifth. The higher-ranked team in each fixture will earn the right to play in front of their home fans. There will be no second chance for the top four sides, as is customary in the AFL and NRL.
It’s interesting to speculate on why Rugby Australia and NZ Rugby have agreed on this particular format, given the disagreements between the two bodies were clearly played out in the media.
The conference system of the previous, pre-pandemic Super Rugby was deemed confusing, so that rules out an obvious Australia versus New Zealand conference system.
Having a top eight in a twelve team competition is mildly ridiculous. Teams with losing records will make the post-season each year. It seems to me that this is a sop to Australia to ensure at least one of their teams will make it to the finals. That should make it more appealing to future prospective bidders for the Australian broadcast rights, which the very limited market of NZ needs as much as Australia does.
On paper, it seems like a reasonable compromise to get the relationship back on track, or at least on speaking terms. There is, of course, the gross competitive imbalance which has wrecked the competition, which is still to be rectified. The easy solution would be to allow Kiwis to play in Australia and vice versa without affecting their ability to be selected for internationals. The market would then naturally even talent out across the franchises and the Australian teams would naturally become more competitive and thereby more appealing to Australian viewers.
They won’t do this, because rugby is ultra-conservative and hide-bound and knows-best, so the new Super Rugby will probably have some of the same weaknesses as the old Super Rugby because they’re just kind of hoping the competitiveness gap fixes itself. Something about grassroots.
Should be fun to watch this one play out over the next few years.
The grace, the beauty of sports
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