Super Rugby draw heavily favours NZ sides but they can't win in Australia

At the end of round nine each team has played eight games which is one more than exactly halfway through the season and this is a good moment to reflect on what has been and to look ahead to what is coming. 

To date, the Highlanders and the Chiefs are the only ‘Kiwi’ sides excluding Moana Pasifika, to have played in Australia. 

The Landers have played three times, while the former table topping Chiefs have played and lost their only regular season game in Australia, let that sink in. 

Head-to-Head

Last 5 Meetings

Wins

1

Draws

1

Wins

3

Average Points scored

25

32

First try wins

40%

Home team wins

60%

This revelation highlights how skewed the draw has been, with three of the Aussie sides having played two games in New Zealand, with the Force only having played one. 

In the back half of the season, the Hurricanes (3), Blues (1), and Crusaders (2) will all come across the Tasman but the fact that the Blues and Chiefs only have one game each on Australian soil all season, is just plain wrong. 

The ledger between the two nations sits at six-a-piece with the Aussie sides winning all their home games and the Kiwi sides dropping two at home to the Queensland Reds in Dunedin, and at Eden Park against the Brumbies. 

Although home ground advantage isn’t everything, it certainly is a factor in preparation and impacts results, and the remaining split of home and away games for ‘Kiwi’ teams appears to make for a very tightly contested backend of the season. 

In round 10 the Hurricanes travel to Perth to take on the Western Force, after the men from Wellington narrowly lost to the now table-topping Crusaders. 

It’s a game the Canes will look at with an intent to cause an upset and claim the first ‘Kiwi’ win in Australia for the year. 

Conversely, Simon Cron and his Force are coming off a well deserved and much needed bye week, seeing as they were the last team to get a bye in the competition, playing eight weeks straight with the largest travel distances. 

They conjured a good win over the Highlanders in round nine which means that despite the Waratahs upset win over the Chiefs, they retained their spot in the top six. 

The following round, the Reds host the Blues at Suncorp, for their only game in Australia in the regular season. 

Again, the fact that last year’s competition winner and the runner up only have to play on Australian soil once each is ridiculous, however, if there’s one side you wouldn’t want to play that deep into the competition, it’s the Reds. 

The sad demise of the Melbourne Rebels in 2024 has meant the Reds are the side which benefitted the greatest, apart from the Waratahs, from the influx of talent from Victoria. 

Fixture

Super Rugby Pacific

Reds

35 - 21

Full-time

Blues

All Stats and Data

It means that although they have been carrying a long injury list for much of the season, they have the depth in key positions to rotate and cover their injured well. 

Similarly, the Blues have a full casualty ward, and they are heading into a bruising encounter with the now table-topping Crusaders in Christchurch this weekend, a rivalry which always delivers a bone crunching affair. 

If we circle back to the split between home and away games against the ‘Kiwi’ sides in New Zealand, the ledger currently stands: the Waratahs have won none from two, the Reds 1/3, and the Brumbies 1/2. 

The Force are the only side which has not played all three of their games in the land of the long white cloud yet, but they lost their only game so far to the Crusaders in round five. 

They still have a two week tour to NZ during rounds 11 and 12, with back-to-back games against the Chiefs and the Blues respectively. 

With all these numbers in mind, the backend of the season looks to be blockbuster, with the remaining clashes between Aussie sides and the Hurricanes, Blues, and Crusaders all to be played on Aussie soil where the home sides have a 100 per cent win record to date. 

The Canes and the Blues are the ‘Kiwi’ sides with the lowest seeding heading into these Aussie clashes, sitting at eighth and ninth respectively.  

The Canes’ three Aussie soil games of their remaining six games means, they could theoretically walk away with only a 50 per cent win rate from their remaining games. 

For the Blues there is not too much to worry about with their solitary clash not necessarily determining their finals hopes, depending on how their next couple of rounds go. 

However, the Blues and Reds have a great rivalry in recent history, and this looks set to continue for their round 11 clash, after the Reds come off their bye. 

For the Crusaders, the two clashes in Sydney and Canberra in rounds 14 and 16 could prove crucial to their ambitions of home semi-finals. 

The split of games in New Zealand and Australia must be addressed next year, because you can’t have only three Kiwi sides playing two or more and then the remaining two only playing a single game. 

This issue feeds into the calls for a for-and-against format, with two bye weeks per team not feeding the hype or demands of the competition. 

Especially because Super Rugby is already a much shorter season than a lot of other top tier competitions around the world.