World Series Rugby not a failure, not yet a success
When Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest – affectionately known as Twiggy – announced World Series Rugby in early 2018, it was touted as a potentially revolutionary new competition which could have a major impact on world rugby and keep the game alive in Western Australia.
The need for change in Super Rugby following the 2017 season resulted in the Western Force being ejected from the competition for 2018 and beyond, so the WSR has given WA fans plenty of rugby to enjoy over the last season.
Whilst there’s certainly plenty of room in the world rugby environment for outspoken entrepreneurs such as Twiggy, whether or not the World Series has actually achieved the original aims of the competition is still very much up in the air.
In 2006, both the Western Force and the Cheetahs were added to Super Rugby – the first teams introduced to the competition since its inception in 1996. Neither team saw immediate success. The Force finished last in the 2006 season (with their only win coming against the Cheetahs) and propped up the competition ladder for many of the years prior to their expulsion, managing to finish in the top half of the table only once.
Still, the Force were removed at the expense of another seriously underperforming Australian team: the Melbourne Rebels. The Rebels entered Super Rugby in 2010 and were given ample support (both abstract and financial) from the Australian Rugby Union. When it came time to decide who to cut from Australia, the ARU unsurprisingly favoured their Victorian lovechild, even though the Force had an arguably stronger case for staying.
The Rebels had reasonable success this year, finishing one spot outside of qualifying for the finals – which has encouraged some people to suggest that the ARU made the right decision – but this fails to take into consideration that the Rebels absorbed half of the Force’s team from 2017 – including their coach, David Wessels. Regardless of what the ‘right’ choice was, Western Australia were stricken of their only first-class rugby team and suddenly the pathway to professionalism became a lot more clouded for young rugby players in Perth and the surrounding areas.
Then came Twiggy’s World Series Rugby – a seven match series pitting the Western Force against various teams from around the world – including the aforementioned Rebels, Super Rugby’s most successful team, the Crusaders, and the Top League’s Wild Knights. All of a sudden, professionalism in WA was resuscitated from the dead and the vocal Force supporters had a team to cheer for once more.
In fact, when the Force were evicted from Super Rugby, their supporters turned out in large numbers to show how disgruntled they were with the situation. It’s not a huge surprise that a significant crowd showed up at NIB Stadium for the first match of the series, against Fiji A.
Crowd sizes on their own have been given as evidence that WSR has been a great success – but supporter numbers in the first year of a team’s creation or revival do not give an accurate prediction of future numbers.
Almost 20,000 people were at NIB Stadium for the Force’s 24-14 victory of Fiji A – but attendance figures have been trending downwards for each subsequent game, showing that a big part of the success of the series was the freshness of it. As is often the case for many newer competitions and many newer teams, staleness has already started to set in. It’s certainly too early to write off the series, but whether long term success is on the cards for Western Australia in the future, and the competition can financially maintain itself is yet to be determined.
Excluding Western Australia fans for a moment, when Twiggy revealed his ambitious plans for the World Series, he promised a fresh new spin on rugby that would get crowds more involved and potentially revolutionise the game. In practice, this simply meant brighter lights at stadiums and making some borderline arbitrary law changes.
Rolling subs, a hallmark of rugby league, were introduced to ensure that fresh legs were on offer at all times – especially important given the new 9-point tries, which could only be earned if a team broke out and scored the try from inside their own 22. This fairly bizarre rule only came in to play once in the whole series – when the Force fell to the Crusaders 8-44. More frequently applied were rules designed to speed up the downtime of the game – rules which may have increased the overall time the ball was in motion for, but didn’t actually improve the quality of the games at all.
Arguably, the biggest achievement for Twiggy’s World Series is simply the variety of competitors that have been involved. Teams from around the world have faced off against the Western Force, creating an international feel to the competition – how many professional rugby clubs or franchises have been involved in matches with teams from Fiji, Samoa, Japan, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Tonga in the same season?
Every year, fans around the world love to discuss who would win in a playoff between the European champions and the Super Rugby champions – there’s always a healthy debate about the merits of both Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere rugby competitions, but there’s very little opportunity to actually see teams from the different hemispheres on the field at the same time. 2018’s iteration of World Series Rugby, whilst not necessarily offering up the best against the best, has at least gone some way towards scratching this itch.
Whilst the rugby itself has not necessarily lived up to the hype, the World Series has certainly given us some fresh, interesting matchups – something which no other competition has really achieved in the last few years, bar perhaps the European Championship.
Again, rugby as a professional sport has plenty to gain from outspoken, influential individuals like Twiggy – the sport is still relatively young and there’s always going to be room for improvement with regards to how the game is managed and developed. All that being said, however, the jury is still out on World Series Rugby – it’s much too early to say it’s been a great success, but it would also be foolish to write it off as a failure just yet.
Perhaps the World Series hasn’t been the revolution that was initially promised – but it’s a step in the right direction.
In other news:
Comments on RugbyPass
Close games are what we want to see…. What a match it was…. I am sure that everyone was drained by the end of it. The reality of it all there has to be a winner and a loser. The fact that we still talking about it is almost 6 months to the day Rugby is the winner.. Asante sana… Here is to 2027 and what it will bring out.
179 Go to commentsIt’s going to be a good game. COYQ
1 Go to comments“Shock”, the guy was casually saying he was just slightly surprised. Nowadays if you say anything it gets taken completely out of context. Calm down everyone.
154 Go to commentsAll I can say after reading this bitter, sour, sad piece is… Thank you very much! This will be read in the change room just before kick off on 31 August…
179 Go to commentsLook, we know contradicting opinions and wacky comments bring readers and clicks, so well done to RP for allowing always-wrong-Ben to say something here. However RP needs to put a disclaimer next to his comments for their own credibility. NZ was and is incapable of acknowledging their opp beating them. They refused so with Ire and with Arg in 2022 and also the Boks in 2023 x 2. Nothing Ben says here holds water, NZ attacked backwards, except when Kolisi and Kolbe was off And cyncialy took out Bongi, we played without lineouts for 75mins. Kolisi and Kurt-Lee almost scored twice. Thats 3 vs 2 for Boks, but the Boks opportunities was legal. Boks should have been 16-3 up by half time. Tacticaly the Boks attacked better defended better scrummed better (without a hooker) kicked better and crossed the whitewash more times. Boks beat Fr Eng Nz to win in 23, comeon give some credit at least. Even Federer Verstappen NY Mets, Mamoa, was able to see a great human sport achievement by the Boks and their DNA Boks #RWC27 !🏉
179 Go to commentsForget the 85kg bit, that can become something else. However I do like the one off test on ANZAC day idea. SR plays Fri/ Sat, test players travel Sunday and the squads have the full week together before playing Saturday. Rest of SR has a week off. Either involve women's teams in same location or in the other country and rotate annually. Herbert is right in that change is needed.
3 Go to commentsI’ve read loads of nonsense before but this article takes the cake. Or perhaps someone changed the date for April Fool's Day.
3 Go to commentsReally Rugbypass? Ben Smith I think you forgot what the Springboks did to the All Blacks at Twickenham 8 weeks earlier? Springboks 35 All Blacks 7. There is alot of ifs and buts in your article. The All Blacks threw the sink at the Springboks and unfortunately they were not good enough regardless if they played with 14 men or not. It was the Springboks who forced the All Blacks to make mistakes! Sorry but not Sorry the Springboks is the best ever Rugby World Cup Nation in the world. 4 Cups baby!
179 Go to commentsYou just backed the Boks with that fantastic review! Well done! Have some cake!
179 Go to commentsBen Smith please write up something better than this. The Springboks would have won the world cup if you were 15 men on the field. They would have found a way, they always find a way to beat the All Blacks.
179 Go to commentsWow, there is a lot of “could have” and “ should have” in this waist of time dribble. I love the desperation in this story to search for a glimpse at a silver lining. Here are the facts, NZ was a badly coached and undisciplined shadow of their former glory. They never took the lead in a game they were never going to win.
179 Go to commentsGOTTA MAKE ‘THE GEORGE’ HAPPEN!!!! That’s a great idea! A trans Tasman midget battle on ANZAC Day. I don’t think the ABs Wallabies game should be a one off winner takes all though, just the first match with the other two later in the year with the RC. Reason being, no one will ever shut up about how aussies couldn’t win it when it was a 3 match series.
3 Go to comments@Ben smith. Thats knock out rugby. So honeslty who cares?
179 Go to commentsIt will interesting to know which Irish players said that…
2 Go to commentsNaaaww boys will be boys! Now run along ya wee scamp! Don’t let us catch you at again😏
1 Go to commentsGreat to have Ethan Blackadder back in the Crusaders in the last few weeks. One of the best all round loose forwards around. He played so well last week against the Rebels. Fantastic attitude Ethan has and his comments are spot on.
2 Go to commentsThe author is 100% right. The Springboks know that they don't have near the natural attraction, mana, skill and mystic the All Blacks have. So, Chasing the sun 1 & 2 was concocted to overblow the Boks image on the back of a corruptly obtained “win". It's marketing ploy to force the Boks delusion as the World's Best. I guess World Rugby is also not to be believed when it came out with an apology about how the final was officiated. And if the 2023 final such a superb game by the Boks, then the Boks crying about Referee Bryce Lawrence for decades is also deserves a laugh. Chase the sun and get burned like a moth. A very well written literary piece that tore the Boks and Chasing the sun farce to shreds. 🖤All Blacks🏉
179 Go to commentsI’d say France was far more hard done by in the 2011 final than the All Blacks in this game. Joubert simply refused to call a penalty against the All Blacks in the last quarter even directing an All Black to drop a ball he picked up in an offside position rather than penalizing him. This article also totally discounts the efforts of PSTD. Ask Jordie how well he played. Or the backup flank who played hooker for the entire game. Siya was also a brilliant tackle by Richie from scoring a blinder. Pollard was also fantastic. Look I don’t like the boks style but the only thing more questionable than the content of this article is the timing of it. Get over it already
179 Go to commentsDad Marty was also a handy rugby player for Linwood back in the day. Great bloke. Sensational softball career.
2 Go to commentsWhat ifs are always dangerous. If you look at the game before Sam cane got sent of SA was dominating. You could make the argument the going down to 14 men rallied the troops and made them have to play to win which is always dangerous.
179 Go to comments