How Europe can make Super Rugby great again

Super Rugby bosses looking for a proven competition model could do worse than follow the successful European Champions Cup, writes James Harrington.

On the whole, Southern Hemisphere rugby has prospered very nicely, thank you very much, with a simple policy of seeing how the game is played in the north, ignoring it completely and developing something superior in every way.

Back in the day when tours were real tours, sides from the northern half of the world would find that South African teams were always more powerful; Australia’s more pugnacious; and New Zealand’s just better. At everything. That was the way of the rugby world.

And then came Super Rugby, the club competition to rule them all. Fans from oop north, unused to this diamond-cut version of the game, would tune in and watch in awe at the sheer quality of the devil-may-care rugby unfolding in front of their very eyes.

Today, however, Super Rugby has become a victim of its own success and ambition. It has grown fat and unwieldy, jaded and over-complicated.  

Sanzaar’s plan to cut the number of teams from 18 to 15 isn’t going smoothly, while the on-pitch gulf between the New Zealand franchises and everyone else is sometimes embarrassing.

Today, watching it from afar sometimes feels like being ‘re-educated’, Clockwork Orange-style, by being forced to watch the 2015 World Cup quarter-final between the All Blacks and France on permanent loop. It’s not a contest, which is what rugby is all about.

Various options to deal have been put forward to make Super Rugby great again – beyond even Sanzaar’s cull-and-cure.

Waratahs’ CEO Andrew Hore, who knows a thing or two about rugby, has suggested New Zealand should welcome eight NRC teams into the Mitre 10 Cup to help develop Australian players and reinvigorate Australia’s Super Rugby and international teams.

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There’s no doubt the game in Australia is suffering. As standards have on the field have slipped, crowds and TV audiences have plunged. Australians have turned off – and against – rugby.

Others have said the conference system is a bad idea that needs to be replaced by a straightforward league structure. There’s a strong argument for that. It worked before, for a start.

Peak Super Rugby occurred when it had 12 teams. It was still pretty damn awesome when it boasted 14 teams. Now? Not so much.

Perhaps there’s a third way. For once, the Southern Hemisphere could do worse than follow in Europe’s footsteps and copy the European Cup. For 20 years it has been a fantastic competition, with little noticeable tinkering required to the basic model.

In much the same way, entry to a future Super Rugby tournament could come via annual qualification through a domestic league system.

Changes would probably be needed domestically. For the sake of argument let’s call these league systems the Mitre 10, NRC (perhaps with the Sunwolves included) and Currie Cup – maybe even the Campeonato Argentino.

It would allow the unions across the currently ailing areas of Super Rugby world to improve their domestic leagues, community and grassroots rugby, without expecting New Zealand to do all the player development work.

Interest in domestic competitions – already pretty hot in New Zealand, reasonably strong in South Africa, not so great in Australia, and in need of investment in Argentina – would rise, courtesy of the prospect of qualification for a Super Rugby competition.

With one round of the French Top 14 remaining, six teams have a fighting chance of taking the solitary automatic French place remaining in next season’s Champions Cup. Forget buying a ticket to matches featuring those clubs this weekend. They have long been sold out.

In England, Premiership attendance could top the two-million mark for the first time, courtesy of marketing to kill for, and in part thanks to the continuing lure of the Champions Cup. One match left, three teams in with a shout of the one remaining available slot.

This foundations-up approach to the pinnacle of European rugby works. It brings in crowds – a combined 90,000 at the two Champions Cup semi-finals, admittedly with fanatical Irish help, but also 25,000 at the two Challenge Cup semis … without fanatical Irish help.

And, frankly, the European Cup is these days a more entertaining spectacle than Super Rugby. Games are closer. Tension is higher. And standards across the board are pretty decent.

Token Italian sides apart, there are no gimme fixtures. Unlike Super Rugby, no one nation’s teams are way ahead of the others.

The Scottish, Irish, English and French teams that contested the quarterfinals were there by right, not some convoluted conference system designed to artificially manipulate interest. There were English, French and Irish teams in the last four, and the final is a shoot-out between the Premiership and the Top 14.

Given the greater distances in Super Rugby, there are logistical issues to overcome, but there’s no deal-breaker reason a similar tournament model can’t work in the Southern Hemisphere.

The New Zealand Rugby Union boasted in its recent annual report that: “The success of our national and Super Rugby teams is entirely reliant on the success of community rugby. This investment in community rugby is growing the pool of future All Blacks.”

A European-style Super Rugby tournament could be the start of something similar, spread across Australia, South Africa and Argentina. Everyone’s a winner. Except for tourists from the north.

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