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What a complete mess SANZAR have made of Super Rugby!
The 2016 Super 18 format is not only unnecessarily complicated, it also favours certain teams and prejudices others, with the Lions and the Sharks in particular getting royally shafted!
I don’t think I can explain how the format works any better than Wikipedia, who give a very succinct summary for a very complicated and overblown tournament. You have to understand the distinction between Groups and Conferences if you hope to understand this lot but – for what it’s worth – here is Wikipedia’s explanation.
The 18 teams will be grouped geographically. There are two regional groups, each consisting of two conferences: the Australasian Group, with five teams in the Australian Conference and five teams in the New Zealand Conference and the South African Group, with six South African teams, one Argentinean team and one Japanese team split into a four-team Africa 1 Conference a four-team Africa 2 Conference.
In the group stages, there will be 17 rounds of matches, where each team will play 15 matches and have two rounds of byes for a total of 135 matches.
Teams will play six intra-conference matches; in the four-team African Conferences, each team will play the other three teams in their conference home and away, while in the five-team Australasian Conferences, each team will play two teams home and away and will play once against the other two teams (one at home and one away). The other nine matches will be a single round of matches against each team in the other conference in their group, as well as against each team from one of the conferences in the other group. For 2016, the teams in Africa 1 will play the teams in the Australian Conference, while the teams in Africa 2 will play the teams in the New Zealand Conference.
The top team in each of the four conferences will automatically qualify to the Quarter Finals. The next top three teams in the Australasian Group and the next top team in the South African group will also qualify to the Quarter Finals as wildcards. The conference winners will be seeded #1 to #4 for the Quarter Finals, in order of log points gained during the group stages, while the wildcards will be seeded as #5 to #8 in order of log points gained during the group stages.
In the Quarter Finals, the conference winners will host the first round of the finals, with the highest-seeded conference winner hosting the fourth-seeded wildcard entry, the second-seeded conference winner hosting the third-seeded wildcard entry, the third-seeded conference winner hosting the second-seeded wildcard entry and the fourth-seeded conference winner hosting the top-seed wildcard entry.
The Quarter Final winners will progress to the Semi-Finals, where the highest seed to reach the Semi-Finals will host the lowest seed and the second-seeded semi-finalist will host the third-seeded team.
The winner of the Semi-Finals will progress to the Final, at the venue of the highest-seeded team.
So first off, no matter what the results, the Australasian Group gets five quarter finalists and the South African Group only gets three. That is the first bit of prejudice against all the South Africa and Argie franchises. Suffice to say that the New Zealand and Australian teams can finish fifth in their group and still make the quarter finals while the South Africa teams and Jaguares have to finish in the top 3.
Secondly, the South Africa Conferences look very lopsided to me. The Bulls and the Stormers are in a group with the hapless Cheetahs and the Sunwolves easybeats while the Lions and Sharks have the Kings and Los Jaguares in their Conference. The Bulls and Stormers are blinding certainties to finish in the top three of the Group (note Group, not Conference where they will certainly finish first and second) while the Sharks, Lions and Jaguares could well end up fighting for a single quarter final spot.
As if having the tougher Conference isn’t bad enough for the Sharks and the Lions, their Conference also ends up having to play New Zealand teams in cross-Group encounters, while the Bulls and Stormers only have to play Australian sides.
Yes, the Waratahs and Brumbies might be tough opponents.
However, while the Bulls are hopefully smashing weak teams like the Rebels and the Force, the Sharks and Lions will be up against the likes of the Chiefs, the Hurricanes, the Crusaders and the Highlanders! No rocket science required to see who has the tougher task here.
Sadly, while the Sharks and Lions are my two favourite teams (in that order) I give them only a small chance of making the quarter finals (and zero chance of both going through!). Even if one of them does make it, it’s very unlikely they’ll be among the top seeds.
I almost hope this year’s comp will be a gigantic stuff up so we can go back to a Super 12 where everyone plays everyone and there’s none of this nonsense.
Oh well, come on Sharks!
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