2016: A year of living dangerously for Super Rugby

Back in September 2015 SANZAR issued a media release headed: “New draw, new trophy, new teams in a new era for Super Rugby.”

A better headline might have read: Super Rugby 2016 enters a year of living dangerously.

The point about the new draw and the new teams is that the changes were not forced on SANZAR because of a failure in the now old format.

2016 SUPER RUGBY TEAMS

The three conferences of five teams each from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand had produced the best provincial rugby tournament in the world.

Super Rugby has been a television hit in Europe, particularly. The quality of the rugby played can be gauged from the fact that all three SANZAR countries, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, played in the semi-finals of the 2015 Rugby World Cup tournament.

The changes to the format were forced on SANZAR by a commercial decision to increase the reach of the tournament to Japan and South America, hence the inclusion of the Sunwolves (Japan) and the Jaguares (Argentina).

To my mind, the inclusion of a Japanese side makes good sense. Japan has a growing rugby presence. The 2019 Rugby World Cup will be played at that country. And the Brave Blossoms’ sensational victory over the Springboks at the 2015 Rugby World Cup has fired the Japanese public for international-flavoured rugby.

Rugby has terrific growth potential in Asia, and Japan is the obvious dynamic centre of that potential. This year, for instance, the Sunwolves play the Cheetahs (round 3), the Bulls (round 5) and the Stormers (round 12) in the newly constructed football stadium in Singapore.

I am generally supportive of the inclusion of the Jaguares coming into the Super Rugby format. But in the longer scheme of things Argentina should surely be the dynamic centre of an all-Americas type of Super Rugby tournament embracing teams from Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Brazil, the USA, and Canada.

Perhaps in five years time, probably ten years, this concept might be feasible.

Right now, the Jaguares are a Super Rugby team and their existence has increased the travelling tyranny of the 2016 tournament.

I would note that Greg Peters, SANZAR’s chief executive responsible for getting the Jaguares into Super Rugby, is now the chief executive of the franchise. His experience with travelling arrangements and the general logistics of presenting a strong Super Rugby franchise should be invaluable for the Jaguares in getting through the early stages of the tournament, particularly.

While the case for the inclusion of the Jaguares is reasonable on several grounds, I cannot find any grounds for the inclusion of the Kings, as a sixth South African side.

Why South Africa should have six Super Rugby teams, to the five each in Australia and New Zealand, is inexplicable. Only one South African franchise (the Bulls) has ever won a Super Rugby title. Three Australian franchises have been champions and four New Zealand franchises.

The Kings’ place in the 2016 Super Rugby tournament has nothing to do with rugby and everything to do with South African race politics, as practised by the incompetent and corrupt Zuma ANC government.

The Kings have been in administration by the SARU. Their players and staff (including Carlos Spencer) have been in dispute with the franchise over salary payments. Players are trying to leave, and some have already left, the franchise. A head coach, Brent Janse van Rensberg, resigned after two weeks of being appointed.

There have been consistent calls for the driving force behind the Kings EPR, president Cheeky Watson, to resign.

How a bankrupt franchise, with a poor playing record in domestic rugby, can hope to be competitive in the next few years is an indictment that hangs over the head of the administrators of South African rugby.

They could not decide which of the other teams to drop from the South African conference when the Zuma government demanded the inclusion of the Kings in the Super Rugby tournament. So the SARU forced SANZAAR to include the Kings into a expanded (I would say bloated) South African conference.

This conference, with the inclusion of the Sunwolves and the Jaguares as well, has been split into two four-team conferences.

And as a consequence of this stupidity, we now have a schedule and a conference format that is unwieldly and unfair.

The main danger is that the massive changes that have been made to the format, schedule and rules of the Super Rugby tournament might have an Icarus Effect on world rugby’s best provincial tournament, until now a soaring success, and bring it crashing to the ground.

The new Super Rugby format for 2016 will have “an opening night extravaganza” with three of last season’s four semi-finalists meeting (Blues – Highlanders, Brumbies – Hurricanes) on the first night of the tournament, Friday February 26.

The new Japanese team the Sunwolves play their historic first match against the Lions on February 27 in Tokyo.

The new Argentinean team, the Jaguares, start their Super Rugby history at Bloemfontein against the Cheetahs.

And the Port Elizabeth-based Kings play the Sharks at the splendid Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium.

There are two groups of teams in the new format. The Australasian Group features the Australian and New Zealand Conferences, each compromising of five teams. The South African Group is made up of Conference 1, the Bulls, Cheetahs, Stormers and the Sunwolves, and Conference 2, the Kings, Lions, Sharks and the Jaguares.

Teams play six matches within their own Conferences, five against an Australasian Conference, and four against a South African Conference.

All this seems to be a complicated mess that will confuse and annoy supporters, especially in Australia and New Zealand.

When all the details of the new format were annonced, SANZAR’s interim chief executive Brendan Morris endorsed this complicated format with a resounding cockadoodle-doo: “As we stand eagerly on the cusp of a new era of Super Rugby, fans can look forward to the upcoming season with a great deal of optimism and enthusiasm.

“We are in the envious position to be delivering our great brand of rugby to new cities and international markets, unlocking a host of commercial opportunities and delivering the unbridled excitement of Super Rugby to a legion of new and existing fans.”

So much for the hype.

It seems to me that the new format is ambitious (in the Sir Humphrey mode), complicated, unfair to Australian and New Zealand franchises, has set up one of the traditional South African franchises for a tournament win, involves huge amounts of travel for some teams.

It is designed, as far as I can ascertain, for overseas television markets, particularly Europe and Japan, rather than for rugby supporters in Australia and New Zealand.

Wayne Smith, in an article in The Australia titled “Normal realities suspended in timeless Super Rugby schedule,” suggests that the travelling schedule for the Australian sides will not be as onerous as they will be for the new franchises: “There will only be one visit to Tokyo and Buenos Aires every four years which, frankly, shouldn’t be hard to sell at all to the players

“Whether the newcomers from Argentina and Japan will be quite so enamoured of international travel after this season is another thing,” he concludes.

New Zealand franchises are angry about the short turnabouts as well as the booking problems the tournament schedule has created. The Chiefs and the Highlanders, as an example, after their trip to South Africa then have to go on to Argentina, by way of Brazil (10,500km, 11 hours one way) and play the Jaguares on a soccer field, Velez Sarsfield, that weekend.

The Australian‘s Wayne Smith, too, has pointed out that the schedule was worked out by a Canadian company Optimum Planning Solutions. The Anzac Day round, something that should be a huge marketing bonanza in Australia and New Zealand, sees the Reds playing the Stormers in Cape Town and the Rebels playing the Cheetahs in Melbourne.

If a Canadian company cannot understand the significance of an Australasian Anzac Day round then an Australian or New Zealand company should have been given the scheduling contract.

And how is it that the Waratahs are scheduled only seven homes games and no matches at the SFS after April?

Why did the scheduling go to a Canadian company, anyway?

The schedule undoubtedly advantages some of the South African teams. The Stormers, Cheetahs and Bulls somehow do not face any New Zealand teams in the pool rounds. But they all play the Sunwolves twice!

This easy draw sets up the South African teams on a relatively easy road to the top of their conferences, and a subsequent home ground advantage in the finals.

Certainly an early decision on a new bonus point system by SANZAAR’s new Andy Marinos administration suggests a lack of concern for the thoughts of the various coaches and their franchises. And it raises the question of whether Marinos understands the special elements of free-flowing rugby that have made Super Rugby so successful.

Marinos has ordered that the four-try bonus point system that has worked so well since its introduction be replaced by a system where the bonus point only is applied if a side score three or more tries more than their opponents.

The Chiefs coach Dave Rennie expressed shock that this change was announced to him and the other coaches by email. The three-try option had been discussed thoroughly in the past and dismissed. It is interesting that the first reaction against the Marinos edict came from New Zealand and not, say, South Africa.

Rennie (correctly) accused Marinos and SANZAAR of not understanding why the three-try bonus point system won’t work: “They think that if you score four tries and the opposition has scored two, you’ve got to keep playing and it’s got to make the game better. But realistically, if a team, let’s say are up by four tries with 20 minutes to go, we may say, ‘Oh, we’re going to close shop’ because the only way the opposition is going to score is by us making mistakes. So you end up slowing down the game and playing less.”

The three-try option is used in France, Marinos points out.

French club rugby is attritional. Is this what Marinos wants to Super Rugby?

We’ve seen it in Australia at NRC level, but why wasn’t this option trialled in competitions played at a lower level in other SANZAAR countries?

This sort of pre-emptive strike by Marinos against exciting, free-flowing gives me no confidence in his ability to run SANZAAR for all the countries involved in the tournament.

In general, SANZAAR has been poorly administrated. Super Rugby has prevailed despite this because of terrific coaching and playing in New Zealand, to a lesser extent in Australia and South Africa.

The hope is that in 2016 the players and the coaches will once again transcend the stupidities of the administrators and give us another memorable tournament.