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It’s time to consider the advantages afforded the home side in the Super Rugby final.
The Brumbies have refused to use the amount of travel and disjointed preparation as an excuse for losing to the Chiefs last Saturday in the Super Rugby final.
From the perspective of the Brumbies, that is the correct view to take on the situation.
After all, no amount of saying so will change the fact they had to fly back from South Africa, recover, put together a game plan and then try to put it in place before taking on a side that’s been at home since the 14th of July.
The flip side is it’s hard to deny there was an impact on their level of play down the back stretch of the game.
It’s hard to know exactly how much of the drop-off should be attributed to a brutal schedule – there is the fact they were playing a very strong side to account for as well – but there was surely some.
Some people may not believe there was a huge change in the game due to travel because of how well the Brumbies acquitted themselves.
Last year’s final was probably a good example of travel impacting the game as well and a more obvious example of the problem.
The Sharks were clearly the form, and probably the best, team in the competition over the last six weeks, even more appreciably than the Crusaders were this year.
The travel killed them.
The Sharks had to play in Brisbane (beating the Reds handily), jetted to Cape Town where they stoned the Stormers in maybe the match of the finals and finally lobbed up to Hamilton where they were thrashed by the Chiefs.
Go back through the rest of the finals yourself – home ground = home winner.
The last time that wasn’t the case was back when we’d only just recovered from the devastating Y2K bug in the 2000 season and the Crusaders just pipped the Brumbies at Bruce Stadium.
It was also probably one of the most palatable ‘travel for a grand final’ situations possible.
The Crusaders obviously don’t need to fly too far to get to Canberra and they’d hosted their own semi-final the week before, reducing some of the travel in the weeks before as a whole.
As the competition is currently organised there is even more travel than there was before 2011 because there are three finals rounds.
As this year showed, a team that wins its conference can still end up with some serious frequent flier miles added to their season’s total if they make the final.
So, while the players themselves (rightly) won’t use the travel as an excuse, the impact is undeniable and has actually been increased, so as rugby fans and a stake in the game we can consider it.
To address the obvious counter to this; I do agree there must be a reward for a team who finishes high up the competition ladder after 20 gruelling rounds.
But the way it is now, with the home ground and the travel and the bye added in, it’s so heavily weighted.
It’s been 13 years since a travelling team won the big one, and the way it’s set up now means it could be many more.
Basically, why have a grand final? Just award the trophy to the team at the top of the table after the competition proper and be done with it.
The lopsided conference-aligned competition obviously doesn’t make that entirely fair, but neither does our current finals series.
A convoluted and an alien-to-Australasian-sport solution would be to extend the competition and play the teams currently missed from the other conferences during the regular season (or possibly shorten it if you remove the second game against each in-conference opponent) and award the trophy to the top of the table team, as happens in many football competitions.
I don’t love that idea. There’s something about finals rugby that’s exciting and it’s great to see the field whittled away to the best of the best to duke it out.
The simplest solution to the problem is to add a week between the semi-finals and the grand final.
That keeps the finals the way they are and awards the teams who finish on top a home field advantage. There’s also the fact the higher ranked team is allowed to prepare at home, which many professional sportsmen will say is their preferred routine and is another advantage.
However, the physical travel impacts will be greatly reduced by the extra week off.
Ideally what you want from your grand final is the two best remaining teams, playing at the home ground of the highest ranked team, at the absolute top of their game.
An extra week would also allow for the teams to be used to promote the grand final more heavily.
There would be photo opportunities (not funded by tent building companies or in hard hats) that would make their way into the media and give time for more than a few in depth stories to be told about the characters involved in the game.
Both sides last weekend produced one of the better finals you could wish for, especially given their contrasting styles, but the game of rugby can still improve this jewel in the crown.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.