Frenetic Final Weekend Finally Reveals Upside Of Confusing Conference System

The final round of Super Rugby went down to the wire and saw the Hurricanes jump from seventh on the table to first – a big win for the much maligned conference system, argues Jamie Wall.

Depending on who you talk to the Super Rugby Conference system is either too confusing of too friendly to the South Africans or just plain unfair.

Well guess what? It was never designed to be fair.

What it was designed to do was help the increasingly stale Super Rugby competition stay interesting deeper into each season – and not just by making sure there was representation from all three main countries.

Under the old format four teams would progress to the semifinals, and invariably the order of which would be sorted out weeks in advance. The last regular season weekend would be a pure formality, with maybe only one of the playoff spots still up for grabs. Contrast that to the weekend just gone, which saw an insane set of results catapult the Hurricanes up the table from seventh to first.

After years of watching the Hurricanes botch their ‘mathematical chances’ like they had forgotten their calculator for the maths exam, this victory was exceptionally sweet for their fans. Then on Sunday morning they watched as Los Jaguares put away the bizarrely understrength Lions, meaning Wellingtonians can now look forward to Courtenay Place being even more of a drunken debacle than usual for potentially the next three Saturday nights.

The Super Rugby season is a long, long haul these days. It’s only fair that fans get this sort of entertaining payoff at the business end.

No teams made the playoffs with less points than those that didn’t. For all the supposed South African bias, it was the Australian Conference which benefitted the most, with the Brumbies getting a home quarter final. ‘Benefit’ being used very loosely – they get to play the defending champion Highlanders.

Because of the current system, weak conference sides make the playoffs. As we’ll see soon, they usually won’t stick around for very long.

This year has the potential to see all-Kiwi semi finals if they all win this weekend. Last year’s final featured the Hurricanes against the Highlanders and there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be seeing a rematch in a few weeks’ time. Given the incredible standard of games between the Kiwi sides for the last few seasons, it’s pretty hard to think any rugby fan, neutral or otherwise, will be missing out on watching them.

So it’s not really that bad after all, is it?