News out of South Africa that their Super Rugby teams will explore playing in a PRO16 tournament next year raises many questions over the future of Super Rugby in 2022 and beyond.
This feels less like the end of a movie and more like the start of the sequel.
This is the first part of a two-article series exploring the possible future of Super Rugby for 2022 and beyond based on what has happened in the past. I’ll focus on theory, where things worked well and where things went wrong, mostly in relation to quality and narrative.
The second article will try to put theory into practice with a model for how Super Rugby could look in 2022 and beyond. All the pieces for a great competition are present, they just need to be arranged properly. This competition should not be thrown away lightly, because it is one of the reasons behind the success of southern hemisphere rugby.
This article will continue with the following assumptions: that all SANZAAR members and Japan wish to participate, that South Africa wishes to retain all six teams, that Australia will retain all five teams and that Culling or merging teams is not the answer.
(Photo by David Gray/AFP via Getty Images)
Engaging sports competitions contain at least two ingredients: quality and narrative. For the purposes of this article ‘narrative’ means the stories that make fans support or dislike players and teams, creating rivalries, as well as holding interest to get through possibly dire play.
Given the geography involved since the start of Super Rugby, narratives were always difficult to achieve.
The lack of narrative was never much of a problem for Super 12 because the quality so high, the competition was short and it was not designed to be the national domestic competition. National and state competitions are where narratives should have been created. The initial Super 12 was engaging because every game was close to international standards of quality and intensity and the amateur/semi-pro local scene was still in place.
Super Rugby helped the national teams by having current and prospective internationals test themselves against the best local and foreign talent. Players were able to condition themselves to different environments, vocal fans and travel itself. It can’t be definitively proven that this is behind SANZAAR nations winning five from six World Cups since the start of Super 12, but it hasn’t hurt.
Two main factors that have contributed to the competitions downfall: expecting very different rugby cultures to act in the same way and using Super Rugby for development.
In the beginning each country played to their strengths and contributed according to their amateur history. South Africa used the successful Currie Cup teams as the bases for their clubs. Aotearoa was similar but more nationally focussed, creating franchises based on as equal a geographic spread as they could achieve, making sure no potential international player missed out due to playing for a small province. Australia set up their teams like representative squads based in cities with strong club competitions.
What all of the clubs shared was strength and local understanding – they were in areas that already had strong rugby cultures, ideal to compete in a competition to find the best province, franchise or state in the rugby world.
But this balance was disrupted when expansion teams formed to develop talent, whether in new frontiers such as Perth or Melbourne or to an uninterested group of people like the Kings.
The Jaguares did it right, and Japan could have followed suit if not for infighting between the JRU and the businesses that own Top League clubs. Development is crucial for the future of the game and should have been implemented better within the national scene.
Hindsight always makes everything look easier, so the way forward for Super Rugby would be to look after these developing teams and nurture them.
(Photo by Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
High-quality games are still regularly played by top teams. Stripping back to Super 12 or even Super 14 is not the answer. Removing teams is not the same as having them not exist in the first place, and I would be furious if my team were cut.
Player drain to Europe has had just as much of an impact on the quality of the competition as the increasing number of squads. The reality is that to achieve Super 12-quality by cutting teams, fewer than 12 would remain. It is better to look after the fans and players and achieve this through structural change.
It’s time to address travel and the conference system. They aren’t killing the competition on their own. For the original SANZAAR nations travel has remained largely unchanged – it has always been about four or five regular-season games overseas. Adding Japan and Argentina has added a bit of distance, but travelling across the Indian Ocean has always been difficult. The conference system has stopped travel from getting out of control.
There was some good to the much-disliked conference system. Most of the complaints are not about the system itself but in the unfairness that it creates. If implemented better, playing more games against domestic foes and decreasing travel could increase the narrative aspect of Super Rugby.
This has been evident in the lockdown competitions, whose winners are essentially the conference champions just given the correct amount of importance. The problems were how the conference system affected the season and finals as well as making the national champions seem unimportant.
Putting all of the pieces together, future Super Rugby competitions should allow top teams to put on great matches against each other. Develop the lower teams to higher levels and place more importance on national champions.
Stay tuned tomorrow to read my next article to see how I think that this can be achieved
KCR
Roar Rookie
Hi BB thanks for commenting, Eddie Jones is certainly entitled to his opinion he will tell you so himself, but those words do not seem to fit with the rugby I have been watching which is Super Rugby Aotearoa, SRAU and Mitre 10 cup. I appreciate that viewership has gone down but only comparing Australian viewership to NRL is comparing a fraction of a competition to the entire competition. If viewership in Argentina, New Zealand, South Africa and Japan are also factored in the number does not look so dramatic. What I have seen of global rugby viewing, is that the last world cup was the most watched world cup in history so the game itself is in good shape. The problem is not so much with the sport, but with Australia's relationship with the sport. I feel that the problem in Australia is that the public is essentially forced to look at Super Rugby as a default national competition. It should be an extension of an existing national rugby scene that conditions the best players for international duty and creates quality rugby in all nations. As I said in the article Super 12 actually had this as Australia promoted strong states each with their own strong state competitions. The answer for Australia is obvious, and requires hard work and time to execute. New states are essential for growth but they should be built from the ground up over time, however they currently have super rugby AU teams so these teams need to be looked after while these states are being built from the ground up. Correct me if I am wrong but you seem to be suggesting that Australia should leave super rugby to focus on a national competition with altered laws. I am not saying that this would not work commercially, I would watch it. If that happened however Australian players would miss out on a lot of the experience and conditioning that previous wallabies had. As the title suggests this is about hope the hope that SANZAAR nations can work together from 2022. This could well work out to be an exercise in futility as nations may well be forced to fend for themselves in terms of national development and competition. No matter what happens I believe that all nations will find a way to remain strong but there will be some losses in terms of player development if super rugby is lost, it is up to individual nations of SANZAAR how much they are willing to lose and if it is worth it.
BeastieBoy
Roar Rookie
The Super Rugby model does not work in Australia. Australians aren't that interested in watching non Australian Teams. Maybe an odd NZ Team over time and maybe a Japanese Team, but definitely none of the others. But Fundamentally the game has lost its continuity and as Eddie Jones has pointed out.. it has become like NFL..a series of set plays. This has come about because coach have wanted bigger bodies and have slowed the game down. We are attracting 50k pw as opposed to 750k for League and its getting worse. The only way we can save the game in Australia at the 11th hour is to control and improve the rules and we will only do that if we control the competition.
KCR
Roar Rookie
No were they good? Of course I watched them I mentioned them in the article as well as the importance of having the best vs best in regular competition. Feel free to read part 2 where I show how I would go about achieving both of those goals. Beware though as I said in another comment the competition that I describe is a bit of a platypus, difficult to describe but makes sense if seen. Otherwise Haere ra enjoy your weekend.
SAKiwi
Roar Rookie
What a lot if nonsense! What is needed is a competition between QUALITY teams, not a watered down 12 plus team thing that bores fans. Have you seen the spectators at the NZ Aotearoa competition?? Compared to spectator numbers in previous years.
JD Kiwi
Roar Rookie
Nice article, the bit about the original Super 12 was an especially good analysis of its strengths and I liked the "sequel" analogy. Now onto part two!
KCR
Roar Rookie
Cheers, thanks for that.
Harry Jones
Expert
Thanks for the article!
KCR
Roar Rookie
Thank you very much for your kind words, I should also thank the editors for making my article a lot easier to read. As the article states this is really a hope piece that next year is a one off and that 2022 could force a renovation of how super rugby works. My next piece provides a framework that deals with travel and the issues I brought up here. The reality however, could be saying goodbye to great southern rivals which would be a sad end of an era. For what it is worth I hope to see the Jaguares remain in super rugby from 2022 and beyond as the have provided so much entertainment. I hadn't thought much about the environmental impacts of air travel, but that would definitely be a factor to consider. All competitions have to be sustainable both financially and environmentally and any potential comp needs to look scientifically into the viability of their practices. I am really looking forward to some rugby normalcy to resume, which looks like 2022 whatever form that may take.
mzilikazi
Roar Pro
A well structured and interesting article, KCR. Well done on two counts. For the article, and for writing your first Roar article. I certainly hope some form of Super Rugby emerges in 2022. I think South African teams will leave our fold, and on many fronts that makes me sad. But I do think that post Covid, and with the global warming crisis which is ever developing, frequent and long distance travel will decline on all fronts, not just sport. Australia and NZ are fortunate to be so close, it being faster for us here in Qld, 2 hrs from Brisbane Airport, to fly to any NZ city, than to get over to Perth. A strong and entertaining Super Competition can be developed in our immediate region. I do feel for both SA and especially Argentina. Both are peripheral geographically from the major world centres of population, and thus so much sporting activity. Indeed Australia and NZ are too, but both have strong sporting traditions, and can stand alone so much more easily.