Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

Frenetic Final Weekend Finally Reveals Upside Of Confusing Conference System

Waisake Naholo

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.

ADVERTISEMENT

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.

 
superrugby_banner

 

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.

ADVERTISEMENT

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?

ADVERTISEMENT

LIVE

{{item.title}}

Trending on RugbyPass

Comments

0 Comments
Be the first to comment...

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest Features

Comments on RugbyPass

J
JW 1 hour ago
All Black star Richie Mo'unga stuck in stalemate in Japan

Richie is a great passer too, don't get me wrong. But if I'm picking Mo'unga's direct attack were he threatened the desences in 23' by having the ball in both hands, or Dmac's 24' backline where theyre super deep and he has to run sideways doing skip passes, I choose the 23 backline.


As a first five, Dmac has no threat on the carry, he's too small to bust through, that's why you don't see him try it like Mo'unga does. Dmac can still try to carry (when he should just give it to someone else) as his bailout option when under pressure, but thankfully with the forward dominance it's not so much an occurrence/issue.


Somehow Spew, but we haven't seen that because of the Dmac issue I outlined. It's generally the 10 that doubles around. I don't trust Jordies instincts at doing it either, even in his role of laying it back I don't think he's the one. So while I agree it's a powerful attacking play I don't think it's an option for the All Blacks either. Rieko just hasn't been able to catch the ball, it's pretty much his only problem. You can't see that changing though. I'd imagine they just can that play as something theyre not capable of too rather than change people in and out.


I perhaps go for something more simple, like runners from deep coming into the line at different angles. No so much about width like they were last year, just simple inside or out passes to Clarke/Jordan/Telea straitening the line. We want to see something different happen this year because if its the same I think we'll all be calling for heads again.

13 Go to comments
TRENDING
TRENDING What rugby fans are saying about England's Marcus Smith at fullback Rugby is split over England's Marcus Smith at fullback
Search