How Super Rugby was set up to fail from the start

Back in 1995 under extreme time pressure from the threat of the Super League war, the original professional Super Rugby product, Super 12, was designed and sold within six weeks.

This was an astounding achievement, particularly considering product agreement had to be reached by amateur rugby administrators from three distinct unions: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Also, the fact that they managed to achieve a sale price of US$550 million over 10 years makes it hard to criticise the people or the process.

The Super 12 product wasn’t actually revolutionary. It evolved from its amateur predecessor, Super 10, with the addition of an extra team from each for the three participating unions, and dropping the team representing the Pacific Islands. However, even at this initial stage, a key design fault appeared – moving to a composite/regional team system.

In the earlier Super 10 competition, New Zealand had used its top ranked provincial teams from the previous season. From the first year of Super 12 in 1996, New Zealand moved to a composite/regional system whereby all the country’s provincial teams were aligned with the various Super Rugby teams.

I can’t find any source that explains why it was done this way but I presume it was the desire to provide all players across the whole country with a pathway to play Super Rugby. Of course it also meant that the New Zealand Super Rugby teams were at maximum strength because no player was omitted by being stuck in the wrong provincial team as was the case with Super 10.

Like New Zealand, South Africa had used its top ranked provincial teams in Super 10. Interestingly, South Africa stuck to this method for the first two years of Super 12. However, from the third year in 1998, South Africa moved to a composite/regional system similar to what New Zealand had done in 1996. Presumably this was done for similar reasons too.

Why is moving to a composite/regional team system a key design fault? From the top down, it does make perfect sense to include all players and maximise team strength. However, from the bottom up, it weakens tribalism. I know there has been a lot of discussion on The Roar and elsewhere that forming composite/regional teams would take advantage of existing tribalism. ]

Auckland Blues Jonah Lomu on the charge against the Wellington Hurricanes during their inaugural Super 12 match played at the Palmerston North Showgrounds, Friday March 1st 1996. (Photo by Kenny Rodger/Getty Images)

However, I believe this is a simplified conclusion. To determine the real impact on tribalism, this needs to be looked at from the bottom up, i.e. the impact on supporters. Using a generic example, if two clubs are combined to form a composite team then you would hope that tribalism is maintained. However, even in the best case scenario, 100% of supporters are not going to get on board with the composite team.

There are always going to be some supporters who have a gripe about something, and usually it’s the most tribal of supporters who have the gripe because the object of their passion has been messed with and they don’t like it. Therefore, best case scenario is probably that 90% of supporters will get on board with the composite team.

If the composite team is managed well and is successful then it is likely that tribalism will grow naturally to exceed what was there before. This appears to apply to Ireland where four composite/provincial teams had existed for many years and transitioned to professional clubs fairly seamlessly. In contrast, the regionalisation of Wales from 2003 is probably the best example of how tribalism can be seriously damaged due to a lot of disagreement around the formation of composite/regional teams. Just ask any rusted on LLanelli supporter!

When a composite/regional team based competition is formed, it has a weaker tribal foundation than what existed before. If things go well then tribalism can grow and eventually exceed what was there before (like Ireland). However, if things don’t go well then tribalism is more vulnerable than it was before, leading to supporters turning away, as has been the case with Super Rugby and Welsh rugby.

Back in 1995, Super Rugby definitely had an under-appreciated impact on supporters. While Super Rugby looked new and shiny, as a supporter you suddenly needed to support an additional entity. Let’s say you were an Auckland or Western Province supporter, your provincial team that you were so passionate about was suddenly playing second fiddle to something bigger and better, i.e. Blues or Stormers.

Initially, most supporters may well have decided to go along for the ride on this shiny new thing. But some supporters would have had a gripe and opted out so Super Rugby’s tribal foundation in 1995 was not as strong as the tribalism that previously existed in New Zealand and South Africa.

This made it more vulnerable and less likely to withstand future negative impacts. Even worse if you were from a minor province like Counties Manukau and had to support a new entity that was dominated by your big brother rival, Auckland. How did you then feel later on when your province got switched from one Super Rugby team to another, i.e. Blues to Chiefs, because it made sense from the top down.

As a supporter, your passion still lay with the Blues but your province changed allegiance to the Chiefs. It wouldn’t surprise me if many of these supporters dropped out of Super Rugby and just focused on the NPC, or perhaps even switched codes to support the Warriors and the NRL. There were actually quite a few cases of provinces being switched between Super Rugby teams, e.g. in 2013 Taranaki switched from the Hurricanes to the Chiefs.

I grew up in Cape Town and was a passionate Western Province supporter. The battles with Northern Transvaal/Bulls, Transvaal/Lions, Natal/Sharks and Free State/Cheetahs were always eagerly awaited.

For old times’ sake, I have watched a few Western Province mini-matches on Stan and I am saddened by how poor the support is compared to the cauldrons back in the day. This is the effect that a regional team system has on tribalism. I’d suggest it’s a case of 1 + 1 = <1. In other words, current combined support for the Stormers plus Western Province is less than the support for the old Western Province prior to Super Rugby. The same effect probably applies in New Zealand.

I know I haven’t mentioned Australia yet. This is because Australia was, and still is, very different from New Zealand and South Africa. To round off my personal rugby evolution, I migrated to Sydney in 1986 and remember watching my first TV news program and seeing rugby league highlights showing Terry Lamb, Gary Jack, etc and thinking to myself WTF is this – all these really good rugby players but they’re not playing rugby?

This was a “sliding doors” moment for me. Unlike many migrants who take the easy way out and start supporting rugby league so that they can integrate more easily into social and office environments, I became more passionate about rugby union. Helped by the fact that South African rugby was in exile at the time, I became a diehard Wallabies and NSW supporter. For me, Super Rugby was the savior of rugby in Australia so I embraced it 100%.

In Australia we took state representative teams, NSW and Queensland, and turned them into professional clubs. We also created new professional clubs. Although we didn’t have the equivalent of the NPC or Currie Cup, the advent of Super Rugby in Australia had a similar negative impact on tribalism in the rugby community.

The outcome of introducing Super Rugby into Australia, New Zealand and South Africa is that we introduced an additional tier for supporters to embrace. Australia has three tiers: club, Super Rugby, international. New Zealand and South Africa have four tiers: club, provincial, Super Rugby (now URC), international.

Having multiple tiers significantly fragments the supporter base and means we are in fact in competition with ourselves, not just with other codes. Rugby in France and England are simple and other football codes are simple too – it’s club and country (yet still finding a way to develop players within this simple structure rather than creating distinct intermediate tiers). A simple club and country structure makes it easy for supporters to focus their tribalism. This is the way competitions should be designed – with supporters as the central focus – leading to long term growth and success because supporters want to be part of it.

When Super 12 was designed and sold in that six week period back in 1995, I’m sure no thought was given as to what impact it would have on the proud local provincial competitions. Hindsight is a fantastic management tool so I don’t blame the architects of Super Rugby because their key objective was to design a product that was immediately saleable.

However, I wonder where professional rugby in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa would be today if we had found a way to evolve naturally out of the tribalism that already existed in the Currie Cup, National Provincial Championship and Australian club system.