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Opinion

The great unknown: Will Super Rugby Pacific give the game the stability it craves?

7th February, 2022
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7th February, 2022
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I feel like I’ve said this same thing at the same time every year for the last few seasons, and I’m afraid it remains true again this year.

The Super Rugby season is little more than a week away, and I’m a long way off being ready for it.

I am looking forward to the 2022 season though, because there is a lot to look forward to. Potentially, it’s a ground-breaking year for professional rugby in our part of the world.

Potentially.

It could also become a flaming mess of a situation of no-one in particular’s doing, simply on account of the ongoing COVID situation that continues to play havoc with our lives in the world.

Michael Hooper being named the 2021 John Eales Medallist over the weekend surprised no-one, but in talking to the challenge of maintaining his almost unrivalled consistency, Hooper gave a really interesting insight into the difficulties of attempting that in the face of constant change and the great unknown last year.

“As an athlete, you just want to have certainty,” he said on Sunday.

“So ok, I’m going to be playing here, I know what time I’m going to be there, I can set out a nice plan.

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“What COVID’s taught us is that that’s so up in the air. You’re going to be playing in Perth, or maybe you now won’t be playing in Perth? Maybe it’s going to be on this date?

“It’s a team effort to get that all done, but as the athlete, you’ve got a responsibility to perform.”

We’re all creatures of habit, but in the face of the great unknown, can you ever really be fully prepared? I mean, we can adapt, but can we still perform at the same level despite heavily impacted preparations?

Hooper certainly managed to in 2021, but you get the sense 2022 is going to be a much more challenging year of rugby on either side of the Tasman. The perfect environment to be kicking off a new competition, then.

A similar but different great unknown pushed Canberra born-and-bred Brumbies utility back Mack Hansen to Ireland midway through last year.

Not even a year later, he’s worn the Emerald Green, starring for Ireland in his Test and Six Nations debut in front of more than 50,000 fans at Lansdowne Road. And you know the narrative by now: fringe Super Rugby player leaves Australia, now he’s capped by another country.

Mack Hansen

Former junior Wallaby Mack Hansen is now representing Ireland. (Photo by Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

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The one that got away, they said. How could the Brumbies let him go, they asked? How could Rugby Australia let talent like his just walk away?

“A centralised model would not have allowed this to happen as Australian clubs would have known he was off contract,” I saw mentioned somewhere, amid the hand-wringing and fist-shaking.

Except it wouldn’t have. Let’s remember, a centralised model still has to have other states willing to take a player.

And we know the other states did know Hansen was off contract, because it’s been reported he was offered to all four of the other Australian states. And they all knocked him back.

And they all knocked him back because they quite probably had enough fringe Super Rugby players of their own, all of them flipping between starting games or coming off the bench and not really being able to nail down a spot. All of them wanting more game time, but not quite being able to do enough to earn it. Why would they want another?

Like the states, Rugby Australia didn’t really have a need for a fringe Super Rugby player, either. Miles away from top-up territory, he’d have been, just like he was miles away from any Wallabies squad.

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That’s not even a criticism really, it’s just a by-product of the system. On any given weekend this season and last, there are only 115 professional rugby jerseys available in Australia. Focus on a particular part of a team – like say, the back three – and there’s only 15 starting positions available and maybe five bench spots.

The fact of the matter is a centralised system can’t create more opportunities. And in Hansen’s particular case, a centralised system wouldn’t have made the slightest difference because he chose to leave Australia himself.

In Hansen’s case, the Brumbies did want him. Offered him a new contract. They lost out to the great unknown.

Had he have stayed in Australia, he may well have played more games this season that last. He may not have. But at most, he’d only play 17 games.

Hansen, like so many fringe Super Rugby players, desperately wanted more game time that the Australian environment simply can’t offer. Connacht have already played 14 games this season, and have at least another ten to follow across the United Rugby Championship and European competition.

If Hansen holds his place for the rest of the Six Nations, he could easily play 30-plus games this current season.

Without anything to replace the National Rugby Championship, Australian rugby isn’t getting anywhere near that quantity. A centralised model may do a lot of things, but it can’t just ‘magic up’ more games in a season.

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The reality is players will leave Australia for all kinds of reasons. Some chase money, plenty chase opportunity. Some even return to Australian rugby, and some of them even return as better players.

Andrew Kellaway, the Wallabies’ 26 year-old Rookie of the Year for 2021 did just that, but it took more than a little bit of luck and some bloody good timing to find his way into an international environment and become the right player at precisely the right time, right in front of Dave Rennie’s eyes.

Andrew Kellaway. (Photo by Getty Images)

Andrew Kellaway. (Photo by Getty Images)

Kellaway walked away from Australian rugby, but after a string of injuries and an attitude that he admits himself was sub-par, the reality is Australian rugby moved on without him. Wasn’t offered another contract at the time.

Went overseas because something came up. Regained his fitness. Played a bucketload more rugby than he would have at home. Experienced new cultures, new styles of rugby.

Wasn’t really one that got away, he was just kind of left behind. Not his fault, and not the game’s fault either.

Some come back better players, and Kellaway did.

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Hansen probably won’t now, and that’s not his fault, nor is it the Brumbies. They wanted him to stay. Rugby Australia really only became reluctantly interested because Ireland were already interested-ing their ears off.

Hansen jumped into the great unknown, and now he’s an Irish hero. He’s got flowing locks and a proper beard finally, and as someone who first saw him play before he really had a need for a razor, I’m pretty happy for him.

The truth is we just can’t keep them all.

But that’s why this season looms as an interesting one.

If Super Rugby Pacific can become the exciting, fast-paced professional product we all hope it can be, it really could revolutionise the game in our patch.

It could well provide a stronger platform from which players might be more inclined to stay home and be part of.

It could well get sponsors and supporters and broadcasters and sport fans in general interested again. It could genuinely become anything.

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But before that, it will need to deal with the great unknown of 2022.

We all know that adaptability and flexibility is going to be the name of the game. Changing fixtures, playing squads in bubbles, late team changes, late refereeing changes even; it’s all going to remain part of the picture this season. ‘Continuity with Change’, to borrow a slogan from a political comedy.

So 2022 has snuck up on me, but I’ll get to some degree of preparedness over the next week-and-a-bit.

It feels like we will be in for another rocky rugby ride into the great unknown.

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