The Roar
The Roar

Advertisement

Opinion

League One final gives pause for thought about Japanese links to Super Rugby

30th May, 2022
Advertisement
Autoplay in... 6 (Cancel)
Up Next No more videos! Playlist is empty -
Replay
Cancel
Next
Expert
30th May, 2022
149
3997 Reads

It really feels like finals time kicked off around the rugby world properly over the weekend, with the European Cups being decided and Japan’s inaugural League One champions being crowned as well.

Super Rugby and the United Rugby Championship move into quarter-finals this weekend, and Major League Rugby will follow the weekend after. The English Premiership and French Top 14 begin their finals series that same weekend as well.

In Tokyo, the Saitama Panasonic Wild Knights claimed a gripping 18-12 win over the Tokyo Suntory Sungoliath, delivering Robbie Deans a fifth Japanese title to go with the similar haul he won with the Crusaders.

Wallabies centre Samu Kerevi, playing 13 for Suntory, and All Blacks fullback Damian McKenzie were the focal points in attack, and McKenzie was denied a try just before halftime when the ball was dislodged from his grip maybe a metre out from the try line. But such was the strength of the Wild Knights’ defence that Suntory didn’t have too many other opportunities to fire a shot.

Samu Kerevi

Samu Kerevi. (Photo by Kenta Harada/Getty Images)

Two tries to nil was the tale of the tape, with Wallabies winger Marika Koroibete being at his barnstorming best to score the first one, and he would have had a second not long after if not for a sneaky knock-on in the lead-up. Former Brisbane City and Australian Under-20s centre Dylan Riley bagged the winner seven minutes from time.

While Kerevi was strong if reasonably well-contained, Koroibete’s display would have brought a smile to Dave Rennie’s face, with his first proper Wallabies squad of the season now only a matter of weeks away.

He carried strongly, busted tackles regularly, and finished the opportunities he found himself in, even if one was overturned on closer inspection. There shouldn’t be any concerns about his selection on current form from Wallabies fans.

Advertisement

And this was a point Robbie Deans was very happy to make in the run into the League One Final last week, adamant that it would be a matter of when and not if Wallabies and All Blacks were being regularly selected for Test duty from League One clubs and with no sabbatical arrangements in place or even needed.

“The contact areas of the game are unrecognisable from when I first arrived up here [in 2014],” Deans told Paul Cully for Stuff.co.nz last week. 

“Two of last year’s World Player of the Year nominees (Samu Kerevi and Michael Hooper) came out of League One.

“People generally suggest that you’re only as good as the comp you come out. Well, we can’t be all bad.”

Certainly, the form that Hooper showed in the back half of 2021 after returning from his season with Toyota Verblitz alongside Kieran Read would underline that point. Jed Holloway was in the Verblitz squad at the same time, and he’s been one of the form players of Super Rugby Pacific this season.

Michael Hooper of the Waratahs charges up field during the round 14 Super Rugby Pacific match between the Highlanders and the NSW Waratahs at Forsyth Barr Stadium on May 22, 2022 in Dunedin, New Zealand. (Photo by Joe Allison/Getty Images)

Michael Hooper. (Photo by Joe Allison/Getty Images)

And while Australia have employed a couple of iterations of what will forever be known as the Giteau Rule since 2015, New Zealand have remained steadfast in only picking players contracted to the national body, even with the numerous and fully-sanctioned Japanese seasons a number of their star players have taken over time.

Advertisement

“It’s inevitable, and essential,” Deans said of New Zealand Rugby adopting an overseas policy at some point.

“At the governance and administrative level, they’ve just going to get over themselves and get around the table and start working together. Because particularly in the south, we’ve all got the same challenges.

“The fact they no longer meet those South African players – most of them are up here in Japan – has impacted on the experience of the playing and coaching groups.

“Over time, that will make a difference if it hasn’t already. So it’s probably inevitable that they will ultimately look for some form of cross-border that will involve Japan. They’ve just got to get past all the political hurdles getting there.”

Former Wallabies and Queensland scrumhalf Will Genia is very much on the same page.

“The bigger picture is obviously trying to get a team into Super Rugby, because it’s the same time zone,” he told us on The Roar Rugby Podcast last week.

“And not just a team like the Sunwolves, but a team like Suntory or Panasonic, where they’re a club who already has a base of supporters, a base of an organisation rather than the Sunwolves being like a Barbarians team, with people just put together.”

Advertisement

Paul Cully, coincidently enough, echoed similar sentiments on the podcast in mid-April, that the goal remains for Rugby Australia, New Zealand Rugby, and the Japan Rugby Football Union to come together and form some kind of cross-border competition, exactly what Robbie Deans is calling for.

Of course, the format of such a competition would be an interesting one, and my own view is that it needs to be some kind of aspirational series that teams qualify for, rather than being a set, ring-fenced competition with the same teams every year.

As a guide, the Champions Cup tournament features 24 teams, comprising the top eight clubs from each of the Premiership and the Top 14, and then eight URC teams from a much more complicated qualifying method.

Summarised as best as I can, that method involves the four individual shield winners – that is, the Irish, South African, and Welsh team with highest competition points each season, plus the best team of the two Scottish and two Italian teams. Then, it’s the four highest teams on the table not already qualified.

So for next season, Leinster, the Stormers, Ospreys and Edinburgh go through as shield winners, as well as the next best four teams: Ulster, the Bulls, Sharks, and Munster.

Munster rugby

(Photo By Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

It’s a bit long-winded, but it does ensure the Champions Cup features teams from all across Europe and now South Africa, and therefore maximises interest and commercial opportunities in more countries than would be the case if some countries went unrepresented. Obviously, the next-tier Challenge Cup helps in this department, too.

Advertisement

But that URC method of qualification probably provides a template for this cross-border – I’m going to call it JANZPac, for the sake of a name – tournament, in which you would want to provide an opportunity for the Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika as much as you would want the best teams in Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

A 12-team JANZPac competition at this time of year before the July Tests would also open the door for Super Rugby Pacific to revert to the old 11-games-plus-finals format that Super 12 used quite successfully from inception.

How you want to get to that 12-team split is a matter of creativity, and I’m sure there’s plenty of ideas out there.

The League One top four, plus the best three Australian teams and the best three NZ teams, plus the best placed team of the Drua or Moana, plus the next best Super Rugby Pacific team, whoever that is, just came to me as an idea while writing this paragraph.

But whatever the format, it needs to be equitable and aspirational for everyone involved.

And it would need a proper, European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) type of governing body, too, not the current country rugby committee set-up that seems to run Super Rugby Pacific.

But with something like this, it’s not that big a stretch to see Wallabies and All Blacks being picked to play for their country from Japanese clubs, as Robbie Deans suggests is inevitable.

Advertisement

And from a local point of view, it’s surely better to be working with Japan and forging ties from which everyone can benefit than to continue this charade of paddling against the king tide in a mostly futile effort to try and compete.

close