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David Pocock of the Western Force faces his opponent, Gerhard Mostert of the Lions in their Super 14s match at Subiaco Oval, Perth, Australia, Friday April 24, 2009. (AP Photo)
The South African threat to set up their own alternative Super Rugby tournament to replace the Super 14 is a big bluff. There are no provincial teams available in the rest of the rugby world to replace the Australian and New Zealand provinces.
Any tournament put together by South African rugby would not be worth a fraction of what Super Rugby is to South Africa.
The problem with this bluff, though, is that the South Africans might believe their own bullishness on their ‘go it alone’ policy and the best provincial tournament in world rugby, the Super 14, could go under.
On 15 March, the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper ‘Sondag’ reported that a special meeting of the five SA Super 14 franchises, SA Rugby, the SA Rugby Players Association and the broadcaster Supersport (which has signed lucrative rights from 2011 to 2015 for the Currie Cup tournament) had agreed not to accept any Super Rugby proposal that waters down the Currie Cup in any manner.
Also agreed was that South Africa would ‘aggressively’ try to ensure that the East Cape franchise is the 15th Super Rugby team, if the Super 14 is expanded to a Super 15 in 2011.
The response of South African Rugby to the ARU’s and NZRU’s fall-back Pacific Competition involving Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Pacific Islands, Sondag reported, would be a South African sponsored tournament involving teams from South African, Argentina, the USA, Scotland and Ireland.
The newspaper also claimed that 65 per cent of the broadcasting fees for Super Rugby were generated in South Africa and that any withdrawal by South Africa would be ‘catastrophic’ for Australia and New Zealand.
On May 1, the ARU and the NZRU issued a joint statement saying that it wanted the new Super 15 Rugby tournament to continue through June with Tests between the SANZAR nations and European teams to be played mid-week, an approach that is used in European rugby.
The ARU and the NZRU stated that they opposed the South African preference to start the new, enlarged Super 15 in mid-February. The two unions wanted a March kick-off.
They rejected a SA Rugby proposal to put the two preferred versions of the Super 15 before the broadcasters to decide.
They reaffirmed that ‘talks would continue’ on their alternative plan if Australia and New Zealand separated from South Africa. This alternative might be described as the Asia-Pacific solution.
It was emphasised that the Tri-Nations, with the possible inclusion of Argentina, would not be affected by the impasse.
The CEO of the NZRU Steve Tew acknowledged to journalists that South African rugby, at this time, won’t budge. That replacing South Africa’s economic advantage was ‘massive’, but replacing those dollars was ‘possibly not as scary as initially thought.’
The CEO of the ARU John O’Neill confirmed that the Pacific-Asia solution was a ‘functional option’ that broadcasters ‘find quite attractive.’
It is clear from all of this that the NZRU and ARU are confronting South Africa Rugby’s bluff . And they are undoubtedly correct to do this.
Why do I call the proposals put forward by South Africa Rugby a bluff? Let me count the ways.
First, the money issue is furphy. The South African portion of the broadcasting payments from Super Rugby are already significantly higher than the payments made to Australia or New Zealand. This is right because the market is bigger in South Africa.
But, with no Australian and New Zealand teams there is no world class tournament to generate the television interest and sponsorship interest in Super Rugby that fills the coffers of South African rugby.
If you generate a 65 per cent profit of nothing, you actually generate no profit. This simple arithmetical equation must surely be obvious even to the South African rugby administrators.
Similarly, the drive to have the East Cape franchise as the sixth South African Super Rugby side is ludicrous. This franchise is essentially a black and coloured franchise. The team is extremely weak. It is being promoted on PC ‘rainbow nation’ grounds. It has been given the first match of the tour against the British and Irish Lions which promises to be the only easy match of the tour for the visitors. It will be years, if ever, before this franchise is ready for Super Rugby.
Anyway, the way to get the team into Super Rugby is for it to win its way up through a promotion and relegation system applied to the South African provinces.
There is the additional fact, too, about the claim for a sixth South African side that South Africa hardly warrants having five Super Rugby sides, let alone six. One South African side has won only one Super Rugby tournament. Every year some South African sides clog up the bottom of the table. This season, for instance, three of the five bottom teams are certain to be South African sides.
But the most important ingredient of the bluff is that unlike Australia and New Zealand, there is no alternative set of provinces across several countries to form a tournament that broadcasters would want to pay money for and spectators would want to watch.
Provincial rugby in the USA (with virtually no professional players) and Argentina (which has about 30 part-professional players in Argentina) is so weak that the East Cape team would easily win matches against sides from Argentina and the USA.
What about a tournament with Scottish and Irish teams, then? The time zone is fine, with South Africa being just two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time. What is not fine is the availability of teams from Scotland and Ireland to play in a South Africa-Celtic (without Wales apparently) tournament.
To understand all of this, we need to look at the structure of the South African rugby year.
At present, the SA rugby year starts in late February going through to late May with the Super 14 tournament.
On 10 July through to 31 October there is the Currie Cup, with 55 matches in all.
There are the June-July Tests against mainly European nations.
This is followed by the July-August-September Tri-Nations
And the season ends with the November – December European tour by the Springboks.
It will be obvious from this that the Currie Cup is already significantly ‘watered down’ with the home Tests schedule.
It is equally obvious that the present Super Rugby slot can’t be filled with a tournament involving South African, Irish and Scottish sides. Why?
Because the major Celtic rugby tournament, the Magners League, which consists of four Irish provinces (Leinster, Munster, Connacht and Ulster): four Welsh regions (Cardiff Blues, Newport Gwent Dragons, Ospreys and Scarlets: and two Scottish sides (Glasgow and Edinburgh) has a season that starts in September and ends at the end of May.
The Magners League season, therefore, starts when the Currie Cup is reaching its finals crescendo and ends around about the same time as the present Super 14 season when the South African replacement of Super Rugby should end.
Another problem is that recently the Magners League announced that it was considering expanding to include two Italian sides.
Where would five South African provincial sides fit into all of this? Or perhaps an even better question: Where are the Scottish and Irish sides that would be prepared to go into a tournament with the South African provinces?
One final point: the Magners League is used by Ireland to confirm their two teams to take part in the lucrative Heineken Cup tournament. Would teams like Leinster (a finalist this year after their splendid win over Ulster over the weekend) give up their chance to compete in the Heineken Cup for what is likely to be an inferior tournament with six South African sides?
The plain fact is that there are no spare provincial sides in Europe that would want to play in a South African tournament in the Super Rugby space.
My guess is that if the ARU and the NZRU present a Super 15 schedule (with Melbourne as the fifth Australian province) that ends before the Currie Cup tournament begins, South Africa Rugby really has no option but to accept that its bluff has been called, and beaten.
This presumes, of course, that the administrators running South African rugby are competent officials.
Some would say, including a number of South African journalists, that this is – unfortunately – an heroic presumption.