Peel the layers of the onion, look beyond the sentimental mist of the marketing blurb, the blag about Australian improvement and the opportunities presented by the Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika expansions, and you are presented with a stark reality: another year has passed, but not a lot has changed in Super Rugby.
When push comes to shove, the knockout stages of the competition remain exactly what they have been in the recent past: a competition between the top three heavyweights from the Shaky Isles, with the Brumbies from the Australian Capital Territory sprinkled on, a giddy frisson for a round or two. It is a case of ‘as you were’, with no radical change in the offing.
There has been only one winner of the tournament from outside New Zealand in the last ten years, and that was the Waratahs back in 2014. Since then, it has been a procession of Kiwi victories, and the NZRU takes the lion’s share of the money. It harvests triple the broadcasting revenue of Rugby Australia from the televising of the competition.
Together, we ride. 💛#SuperRugbyPacific pic.twitter.com/95YMV8B5JM
— ACT Brumbies (@BrumbiesRugby) June 9, 2024
When the New Zealand union insisted only two teams from Australia be included for the first post-Covid reset in 2021, maybe it was on to something. Maybe ex-RA chairman Hamish McLennan was deadly serious when he hinted at a move towards an all-domestic competition across the Tasman too:
“We will honour our commitments in 2023, but we need to see what is best for rugby in Australia leading up to the Rugby World Cup in Australia in 2027. All bets are off from 2024 onwards with New Zealand.”
Is Super Rugby Pacific treading water, or falling into a dark crevasse? Can it maintain its international credibility, with South Africa leaving for the north in frustration and no sign of a true challenger to New Zealand? Will broadcasters continue to buy into a sporting event where the outcome looks and feels so predictable?
When Brumbies head coach Stephen Larkham addressed the press room after his club’s 32-16 quarter-final win over the Highlanders, which booked a date the Blues at Eden Park, he could have been talking about the future of the tournament as well as the immediate outlook for his charges.
“We have been in this situation [before] in the last couple of years,” the former Wallaby fly-half said. “In 2022, we played the Blues in the semi-final and we lost right at the end of the game [20-19]. We lost last year in the semi-final [to the Chiefs].
“We have basically achieved nothing yet, and we have talked about that.
“We have played over there [at Eden Park] once already [this season] and it did not work for us [the Brumbies were thrashed 46-7 by the Blues in SRP round nine]. We need to get everything right in terms of our recovery and preparation to give ourselves the best chance.”
Larkham finished by shifting the conversation on to the hopes for an Australian resurgence.
“There has been a massive improvement in the other Australian teams this year, but we are going over [to Eden Park], and we are not really thinking about the other Australian franchises.
“We are going over there as a Brumbies outfit to do a better job than the last time were there.”
The Brumbies have been the most successful Australian Super Rugby franchise for as long as anyone can remember, and they have achieved their success largely by ignoring what the rest of Australia is doing. Only when Aussie pricked up its ears and took notice, with Canberra assistants Dan McKellar and Lord Laurie Fisher reunited on the 2022 end-of-year tour under Kiwi head coach Dave Rennie, have the Wallabies threatened to turn over the top sides in the world.
If there is one word that describes the men from Canberra – including the people shaping the philosophy behind the scenes – it is ‘pragmatic’. It might even be un-Australian – not that it would worry them. They don’t play beyond their means and put pressure on their ability to keep the ball, building the fewest rucks per game of any team in SRP [76] with the lowest average ruck-speed [3.5 seconds]. They kick more than any of the other Australian teams and only the Western Force averaged less time spent in possession in 2024.
They will be the diametric opposites of the Blues team they encounter this Friday. Vern Cotter’s charges thrive on building momentum by multiplying rucks and carries [1st in the competition on both counts] and ramping up the ruck speed [2.9 seconds] in the process. On that sodden Saturday evening back in April, the Blues’ game was more than enough to sweep their opponents from the Capital Territory away. If they had kept going, the Brumbies would have ended up in the Auckland waterfront.
The gimlet-eyed misfits from the ACT will give their opponents as little free opportunity as possible this time around. In the quarter-final, when the home side found themselves on the receiving end at scrum time, giving up six penalties, they balanced the books by pilfering five Highlanders lineout throws.
Especially if the weather is as wet as it was on 20 April, the kicking game will be pivotal. It is in this area that the visitors can make hay, even if the sun is not shining. All aspects of the Canberra kicking game, but most particularly the contestable high kicking game, is pulled off the top shelf in quality terms.
Against the Highlanders, the Brumbies won back six of the 10 contestable kicks they launched, winning two penalties and scoring a try in the process.
Their strapping new number 8 forward Charlie Cale wins most plaudits for his highlight-reel work on attack.
Cale is the penultimate link in the chain of attack wide right, delivering the money pass for Andy Muirhead. But in the Brumbies template, his raw speed and athletic ability are as important – if not more so – for the value they add to his work from the same position on kick-chase.
On chase, it is like having an extra back in the line, but one with the added bonus of a telescopic reach. The great benefit from an Australian point of view, is Cale’s talent will be solidly grounded in a repeated insistence on the everyday, humdrum necessities of the game. In the Brumbies system, wing Corey Toole is required to kick as well he can break or finish a move.
Likewise, full-back Tom Wright.
Why bother running the ball back, however skilled you are, when you can kick the 50/22, and get a lineout throw deep in the opposition 22 instead?
The man on the other edge, ponytailed Andy Muirhead may not have been blessed with the God-given talents [or fashion-sense] of a Max Jorgenson or a Joseph Amakuso-Sua’ali’i, but at this level he is mightily effective at what he does. The vast majority of reclaims in the air were won on Muirhead’s side of the field – and even when the kick went too long, he could be relied upon to make the first tackle on his own.
It may be a small detail in the grubby grey area of the game, but if Muirhead does not make that upfield one-on-one tackle on chase the next man up will be ‘triple A’, and the kick return will be most definitely be ‘on’ for the Highlanders.
The apogée of Brumbies pragmatism and the Canberra view of the game came in the 47th and 48th minutes.
Why bother to pass or even catch the ball, when you can travel over 60 metres up the field and over the try line, in the space of just three kicks? No miracle pick-up for Muirhead at the end of the play, just dribble the ball on, then fall on it to score. And the man closest to him in support? That’s right, it would be the fastest forward in the Capital Territory, or for that matter anywhere else in Australia, Cale.
Is Super Rugby becoming too predictable, and just plain boring at the pointy end of the competition? Quite possibly. You can guarantee the presence of three provinces from New Zealand at the semi-final stage; equally, the Brumbies will make it to the last four, by hook or by crook. It is enough to make you wonder whether Australian rugby should follow in the footsteps of Aussie Rules or league, and look towards an all-domestic product.
The men from Canberra get there not by playing sponsor-alluring rugby ball in hand, but by kicking and chasing and blasting away in the white-hot furnace of the contact zone. Maybe there is a lesson or two in there for Joe Schmidt, if has not already learned them on his travels.
Will it be enough to catapult the Brumbies to the first Super Rugby final since 2013 next weekend? Probably not. Nothing exemplifies New Zealand’s hold on competition south of equator quite like the Eden Park hoodoo, and the strength of that grip is nigh-impossible to break, for better or worse.
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