Alarm bells should be ringing in NZ

Umm same as Australia really just 4 years later. Player opportunity in the NH is massive. I’m afraid NZ can suck it up. Only thing that will stop the movement North is money and an awesome comp to produce it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snaffle

Snaffle: : to obtain especially by devious or irregular means The All Blacks lost ground and Ardie Savea turned around, sprinted back to the ruck, shrugged off a South African trying to clean him out, and snaffled the ball for a turnover. — San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Oct. 2019

Agree that the more teams you have in super, the more pathways and opportunities for players to come through the system and grow the game. But Australia has a fairly unique challenge where rugby has to compete with 2 other football codes (excluding soccer). I can't think of another of the top 10 countries where this is the case. 5 super rugby teams is reliant on the players coming through from grass roots level and moving up the ranks. But this is much harder with league and Aussie rules taking a lot of young players. Either way though, club and national competition under super rugby needs to be developed as much as possible.

That doesn't make sense. Every team had the same travel and crossed the same time zones in the course of a 2 year arc.

Australia dropped the Force and the standard of play across the remaining Australia teams in SR didn't sustainably improve. The Rebels took most of the Force players and within a year were back to playing the same as they had before the sugar hit. The Wallabies were if anything worse after the Force were dropped. The reality is that 5 teams provides a Wallaby feeder group of about 140 players give or take a bit. 4 teams provides 80% of that feeder group. To have a competitive Wallabies team there needs to be a bigger and better pool of players to choose from. This means 5 teams which allows for development of young players who it must be said will take a couple of years playing SR before they are 100% at that level. This is unfortunately the reality unless you are in NZ where there are 3 provincial teams feeding into every single SR team (which isn't quite how it works but you get my drift). Dropping a team provides at best a 12 month sugar hit at SR level but this drops away and doesn't translate into an improved Wallabies performance.

I've been watching SR despite a major dropoff in viewing from South Africa, with all focus now looking at the EPRC and URC. To be honest, I'm seeing greater intensity in the URC, and I feel like there's quite a few teams that would beat the best in SR. Even the saffas struggled in the beginning to adjust to the ferocious breakdown battles, and pedantic refereeing, but these teams are battle hardened up front. What the knock on effect is for the ABs we will find out when Ireland head south, but I'd be pretty worried about Ireland if I were you.

Could be the reason that when they go North they come back better players

Perception really needs to reflect current realities. People do seem to get an idea on something and then never update. The years AB dominance are over, too many people just haven’t adjusted to that yet.

I don’t think it’s ever gonna work trying to match NH and BOK, more negative/defensive styles for either NZ or Aus. It’s not our DNA, there’s a lot of Polynesian influence that’s been great for our Rugby and for Rugby. We must however be able to muscle up to NH, not get beaten for the front foot ball. Am doubting AB’s have that forward power or any significant set piece dominance, other than parity at best V’s eng,ire, france, boks. From a kiwi point of view, it seems the improvement this super rugby, in competitiveness/fight at breakdown and on defence (fitness levels?) by the aussie teams is good for us. It means kiwi attacks have been under pressure in most games. As much as we aspire to beat flat/blitz, BOK and NH defences with superior skill, those skills need to, and can only develop under the kind of consistent week on week opposition, not only in NZ derbies but also those games that the aussie teams bring now. To me, this actually seems a stronger comp without the over travelled and underperforming flatfooted SA teams/Jaguares but we do need those ongoing annual Bok tests. Problem is, I don’t see much, if any, NZ improvement in skill level v’s flat, fanned out defence lines, or discipline at ruck and on defence, or kicking game accuracy and astuteness, nor much set piece dominance either. The test of the NZ/AB rugby standard will be the Ireland series, where they’ll come with a serious challenge, great ambition and planning, to beat us in our home series for history. If Ireland we’re to win or draw the series, AB changes will need to be made, especially coaching but I fear no change would be made.

The results dont change the perception of the fans. Agree they were beaten by the better team in England.

While I agree there are a few really good teams in the NH, it's worth pointing out they have not done particularly well against the South African teams when playing in SA due to the pace the SA teams played with. Can't read much into the Leinster results in SA as they fielded a virtual B/C side though. The Irish on the whole are better than the SA sides in my opinion. There's a pretty good comparison here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58axzIA8qFU SA sides are seen as the standard for enterprising play in the URC. That was never the case in SR so a fast-paced style may still yield dividents for Australian and NZ franchises against NH counterparts. What is different is the style of play up north. It's really attritional and you often see the quality sides go through many phases physically hammering at the line. The SA sides cough up the ball fairly regularly when going anything beyond 5 phases while the Leinsters of this world easily go 15-20+ just piling on the pressure. They are equally adept at absorbing that pressure defensively but if they give a loose kick here or there the SA sides do find holes by being a little bit more creative. That is something which, unless continuously worked on, the SA sides may lose in the coming years as they gravitate more toward the NH style of play. SR was good for the development of the SA game in that it forced our teams to be a little more creative than they probably would be otherwise.

Likewise I get your drift. My objection was not to your argument, but rather that you seemed not to take into account or get over the perennial counter argument. The tennis analogy is a good one. For an amateur, an apparently unforced error is more than likely to be failures of technique and application etc., whereas such reasons are implausible in the case of a top seed. On the surface, when we see players dropping balls too often in games between the leading provinces of two leading rugby nations, it seems to me that we are generally watching highly trained athletes who've been catching balls in their sleep since they first starred on the field as youngsters. I've played in some wonderful teams, which could turn into a bunch of mugs under pressure from even more wonderful teams. Nice chat.

Yeah I felt he was implying that also. But the reality is the Aus teams aren't that bad this year, at least not 2 of them. Even the Reds are solid at full strength. But the tahs and Brumbies are capable teams. The wallabies will go alright in 2023...but the big one for the will be the following rwc. Years and years at the 'bottom'....they are definitely turning a corner

Completely agree with you there and another thing I have noticed is the amount of times Aussie sides stripped the ball at vital moments. Was never in our DNA.. Is this Rennies! influence.

Or head to Japan when they’re in peak form. Better money, seems to be more prospects in Japan. NZ and Aussie clubs are falling behind the times. Lack of support and participation over the previous years has taken its toll. Seems the best results out of all the teams in SRP.. as far as interest and fan numbers is Fiji. Wish all the teams had that kind of support. Yes. Player drain, we can’t compete with the financial opportunities up North.

Thanks. How much do you think their plans and progress with a view to WC 2023 will have been set back by the cancellation of all their test matches in 2020?