Snowballing list of postponed fixtures might force Super Rugby Pacific rethink
For the third time this season, Moana Pasifika have had a match called off due to Covid – and it’s starting to become increasingly difficult to envisage a situation where the ever-increasing number of postponed games can all be rescheduled to later in the year.
Moana Pasifika, the competition’s newest entrant, have managed just one fixture over the opening four weeks of the competition. With each team assigned just one solitary bye week throughout the season, the Pacific Islands side would need to play at least two mid-week matches to make up for the lost rounds of action.
The addition of a sixth franchise based in New Zealand has already had an impact on the five existing franchises’ depth.
“It is an issue. I think it’s an issue. It’s definitely tougher,” Blues coach Leon MacDonald told media regarding filling out wider squads for the 2022 season.
“The depth of our players is just getting less and less and less. Moana’s obviously come in and, ultimately, there’s a lot of players from the New Zealand system that have ended up with them.
“We’ve got an American league that’s started up and they’re pulling a lot of players [from] the NPC, and obviously we’ve got the traditional rivals with Japan and Europe, who have been taking players for a long time.”
Teams have always had to dig deep into their player stocks throughout Super Rugby seasons of the past, with the Chiefs calling up 46 players last season. With the addition of Moana Pasifika, those players on the edges of professional rugby, who have already cut their teeth in provincial competitions but missed out on full-time contracts with Super Rugby sides, are now few and bar between and if any team had to use as many players as the Chiefs did last year, they’d be utilising men much further down the totem pole.
While Moana Pasifika’s opening two games were called off due to Covid within their squad, the latest postponement is due to an outbreak at the Hurricanes. Even with New Zealand’s rule changes regarding Covid, which require only households contacts of confirmed cases to isolate, not simply ‘close contacts’, the Hurricanes reportedly still have upwards of 20 players available for the fixture.
If that’s enough players ruled out of a matchday selection to justify the postponement of a fixture then it will be difficult for New Zealand Rugby to justify playing three matches over the space of 14 days later in the season when Moana Pasifika’s uncompleted games fall due. Even top sides like the Chiefs and Blues will struggle with such an occasion but given the relative thrashing the Chiefs handed out to Moana during the pre-season, it’s impossible to envisage anything other than a bloodbath.
Given the high numbers of cases within the Hurricanes squad – and given what happened to Moana Pasifika earlier in the season – there’s a very good chance that the Hurricanes won’t be able to play next weekend either, when they’re scheduled to face the Chiefs in Wellington, further adding to the list of matches that need to be fitted into the calendar.
Following the postponement of this weekend’s fixture, New Zealand Rugby’s Chris Lendrum suggested that a solution could be shortly forthcoming.
“We are very close to confirming the rescheduling of Moana Pasifika’s previous two postponed matches against the Blues and Chiefs and are confident we can also reschedule the Hurricanes match later in the season,” he said.
Despite that, it’s difficult to picture a solution that suits all and sundry.
Super Rugby Pacific has a hard end date set for early June – there’s little chance the competition can be extended. As such, with little chance that the various called-off games can all be completed in time for the tournament finals, there’s a very real chance that postponed matches will be retroactively cancelled altogether and points dished out accordingly – likely based on which team was afflicted by Covid at the time of the match. That’s the fairest way of deciding matches – even if teams aren’t in any way at fault for Covid outbreaks. It would be considerably less fair to postpone some early matches and cancel others that occur later in the season if the root cause remains the same.
From here on, New Zealand Rugby should be looking for the best method to ensure the competition can be carried out with as much integrity as possible, and that might mean biting the bullet and sending the NZ sides over to Australia to play out the rest of the season.
It’s a move that might not prove popular with the players, who are probably well and truly sick and tired of living out of suitcases, but it’s likely the only way of ensuring Super Rugby Pacific can continue as scheduled.
The decision to relocate the six franchises to Queenstown for the early part of the season is now starting to look like a stroke of genius, but the decision to leave the bubble has undone any of the benefits that came from keeping the teams all in one environment.
With Covid considerably less prevalent in Australia at present (as a percentage of the population), that appears to be the safest place to carry out the rest of the tournament – at least until the outbreak in New Zealand slows.
Either way, it’s looking unlikely that any significant number of fans will be able to attend matches in the next month or two, further justifying a move across the Tasman Sea.
One way or another, the current Super Rugby Pacific season is going to be compromised. It’s now time for NZR to make a call on how that impacts the competition’s integrity as a whole.
Comments on RugbyPass
I am really looking forward to Leigh Halfpenny playing his first Super rugby game for the Crusaders Playing a long side his former Welsh and Scarlets team mate Johnny McNicoll.Johnny has been playing great, back in a Crusaders jersey.The attack has strengthened big time. Also looking forward to David Havili at 10. David is a class act, it also allows Dallas McLeod to remain at 12. A good thing.
1 Go to commentsIf he had stopped insisting on playing in the backrow, instead of wing, where everyone told him he should, he would have been a Bok years ago….
11 Go to comments‘Salads don’t win scrums’ 😂 I love that.
19 Go to commentsCan’t wait for the article that talks about misogyny in Ireland. Somehow.
16 Go to commentsI would like to see a rule change, when the attacking team is held up over the try line, by allowing the defensive team to restart a goal line drop out releases the pressure for the defensive team, but what if the attacking team had to restart a tap 5m out from the defensive team it gives the attacking team to apply more pressure, there are endless options for the attacking side and it will keep the fans in suspence.
2 Go to commentsLess modern South African males predictably triggered.
16 Go to commentsMy heart is with Quins, but the head is convinced Toulouse have too much. Ntamack is back, his timing and wisdom has been missed.
1 Go to commentsWow, what a starting line up for the Sharks) Tasty up front,kremer vs Tshituka or venter …fiery ,,Lavannini ,,will he knobble etzebeth? Biggest game for belleau?
1 Go to commentsIt was rubbish to watch, Blues weren’t even present. Did what they had to do, nothing more. Should be better next week against canes.
1 Go to commentsI’ve just noticed that this match has an all-French refereeing team. Surely a game like this ought to have a neutral ref? Although looking at the BBC preview of the Saints game, Raynal is also down as reffing that - so there may be some confusion about who is reffing what.
1 Go to commentsIf Havili can play anywhere in the back line, why not first 5. #10.
11 Go to commentsThe dressing room had already left for their summer break before they ran out in Dublin that year, and that’s on the coach. Franco Smith has undoubtedly made progress, particularly their maul, developing squad players and increasing squad depth. And against a very tight budget too. That said they were too lightweight last year and got found out against both Toulon and Munster in consecutive games. Better this season so far but they’ve developed something of a slow start habit occasionally, most notably losing at home to Northampton who played them at their own game. Play offs will ultimately show whether there has been tangible progress on last year, or not…!
2 Go to commentsAustralian Rugby has been a disaster, by not incorporating learning from previous successful campaigns. QLD Reds 2011 - Waratahs 2014. Players, coaches and administrators appoint there representatives for scheduled meetings, organisation’s agreement’s assessments and correspondence. This why a unified Rugby Union under one entity works. Every Rugby nation has taken that path. Was most difficult in the Northern hemisphere with over 100 years of club rugby before the game become professional. Took a lot of humility for those unions to eventually work together.
7 Go to commentsThough Wilson’s sacking was pretty brutal, it wasn’t just down to that Leinster game; Glasgow had a lot of 2nd half collapses that season, in the URC and Europe, and only just scraped into the playoffs. Franco Smith has definitely been an improvement, some players are delivering far more than they did under Wilson.
2 Go to commentsjesus - that front 5!
1 Go to commentsShould be an absolute cracker of a game! Will be great to see DuPont & Ntamack in tandem once again🔥
1 Go to commentsBest team ever…. To have played? These guys are still pressure chokers. Came nowhere when it counted. What a joke
84 Go to commentsMusk defends anonymous terrorism, fascism, threats against individuals and children etc etc But a Rugby club account….lock ‘em up!!!
2 Go to commentsActually the era defining moment came a few years earlier. February 2002 to be precise, when Michael D Higgins as finance minister at the time introduced his sports persons tax relief bill to the dial. As the politicians of the day stated “It seems to be another daft K Club frolic born in Kildare amongst the well-paid professional jockeys with whom the Minister plays golf” and that the scheme represented “a savage uncaring vision of Ireland and one that should be condemned”. The irfu and Leinster would be nowhere near the position they are in today without this key component of the finances.
5 Go to commentsIt is crystal clear that people who make such threats on line should be tried and imprisoned. Those with responsibility in social media companies who don’t facilitate this should be convicted. In real life, I have free speech to approach someone like Reinach and verbally threaten him. I am risking a conviction or a slap but I could do it. In the old days, If someone anonymously threatened someone by letter the police would ask and use evidence from the postal system. Unlike the Post, social media companies have complete instant and legal access to the content in social media. They make money from the data, billions. Yet, they turn a blind eye to terrorism, Nazi-ism and industrial levels of threats against individuals including their address and childrens schools being published online all from ananoymous accounts not real people. They claim free speech. Free speech for anonymous trolls/voilent thugs threatening people under false names? The fault is with the perps but also social media companies who think anonymous personas posting death threats constitutes free speech.
2 Go to comments