LONG READ Speeded-up Super Rugby Pacific provides blueprint for wider game

Super Rugby Pacific gladly made itself a guinea pig for the global game back in 2022 when it decided to introduce innovations designed to kill the volume of dead time and generate a higher volume of ball-in-play content.

It was a move that had two distinct goals. The first was to regenerate fan interest in a competition that had lost its way since 2016 due to ill-conceived expansion plans.

Super Rugby had been the most vibrant and engaging club competition when it launched in 1996, but by 2016, when it encompassed four continents, 16 time zones and had 18 teams, it collapsed under its own weight.

When Covid then hit in 2020 and led to New Zealand closing its borders for two years, the competition had to endure more restructuring and geographical repositioning, and yet more fans walked away from it.

As much as anything else, the introduction of an empowerment plan for officials to speed up how long it takes to set scrums and take goal-kicks, as well as lessening the influence of the TMO, was about giving the competition a story to sell to fans.

It was a way of sending a message that Super Rugby was going to put fans back at the core of its thinking and do all it could to produce the sort of high-impact, aerobic rugby that connects so well with the Southern Hemisphere psyche.

It was also an opportunity to show the rest of the world, but particularly administrators in the Northern Hemisphere, what rugby could look like with a few minor tweaks that didn’t mess with its foundations.

Dead time has decreased by more than six minutes per game since 2022. It’s come through making micro savings in various facets of the game that have historically been enabled to drag on for too long.

The plan was to produce faster, more dynamic contests that brought the fans back and then use the evidence to persuade the North that there needed to be universal adoption of some of the behaviours and innovations that were being trialled.

And after 10 rounds of Super Rugby in 2024, the evidence is mounting to support the logic of the plan.

Data has been released to show that dead time has decreased by more than six minutes per game since 2022.

It’s come through making micro savings in various facets of the game that have historically been enabled to drag on for too long.

The arrival of a 60-second shot clock on goal-kicks has been instrumental in speeding things up.

In 2022 it was taking an average of 80 seconds between a penalty being awarded and a kick at goal being taken.

That figure dropped to 71 seconds in 2023 and is now at 68 seconds in 2024.

The time lapse between a try being scored and the game being restarted has also been cut in the last three years – from 113 seconds in 2022, to 100 in 2023 and now it sits at 99 seconds.

This stacks up when the average number of tries scored per game sits at 7.5 as it currently does (up from 6.4 in 2022).

Super Rugby has given the Southern Hemisphere the evidential case it needed to present to the rest of the world that playing around in the margins can deliver huge benefits without compromising the gladiatorial nature of the sport or depowering the set-piece.

Critically, given the number of penalties that are kicked to touch, the figures show how much better Super Rugby is managing the dead time involved in this process.

In 2022 it was taking 33 seconds between the referee awarding the penalty and the kicker striking the ball into touch. Now it takes 26 seconds.

These seconds add up, and so too does the time taken by TMOs to adjudicate on tries and foul play, which is another area where Super Rugby has made a critical reduction.

The average number of TMO interventions in 2024 has dropped to 1.3 from 1.6 last year, and on average that translates as 34 seconds less per game being spent checking tries and 38 seconds less per game checking foul play.

The savings have led to the total time per game dropping from 93 minutes and 51 seconds in 2022 to 91 minutes and seven seconds in 2024.

There is also an evidential basis that these changes are helping Super Rugby regenerate its audiences – albeit not as quickly or as dramatically as it was hoped – with Sky TV in New Zealand saying it has seen an 11 per cent lift in overall viewership this year.

Much of this increase is due to making more content available on a free to air channel, and so an 11 per cent rise is not as sensational as it may appear.

But still, Super Rugby has given the Southern Hemisphere – or New Zealand and Australia at least – the evidential case it needed to present to the rest of the world that playing around in the margins can deliver huge benefits without compromising the gladiatorial nature of the sport or depowering the set-piece.

Arguably, Super Rugby has produced an undeniable blueprint that the game should universally empower referees to better manage the dead spots, retain shot clocks for goal-kicks and consider where else they could be introduced to speed things up.

But one other aspect of Super Rugby Pacific that New Zealand and Australia want the rest of the world to embrace remains contentious – and that is the 20-minute red card.

The evidence suggests that teams can stay competitive with a numeric disadvantage for, about, 20 minutes. If a team is shown a red card with more than 20 minutes of a game to go, rarely do they win it.

A vote on whether to universally adopt this will be held on 9 May, but it’s not clear whether it will win the requisite 75 per cent to be passed into law.

Again, New Zealand and Australia, as well as their Sanzaar partners South Africa and Argentina, believe the 20-minute red card – whereby the sent off player can be replaced – is a means of ensuring fans can get to see the contest they paid to watch.

In the South, 20-minute red cards have been used in Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship since 2021 because they believe it’s a better way to preserve the sanctity of the contest, while they would also like to see tougher post-match sanctions imposed on the individual perpetrators to not trivialise the offences.

They don’t believe that lessening the punitive nature of a red card will endanger player safety, and the prevailing view is that rugby can’t sustain meaningful contests when it ends up being 14 versus 15.

The evidence suggests that teams can stay competitive with a numeric disadvantage for, about, 20 minutes.

If a team is shown a red card with more than 20 minutes of a game to go, rarely do they win it.

There are exceptions – England beating Argentina at last year’s World Cup after Tom Curry was sent off after 11 minutes – but mostly a red card in the first half or early in the second, removes any uncertainty of outcome for the fans.

When it’s realised that 30 red cards have been shown in the 160 Tests played between the leading nations since 2021, it’s a significant decision for rugby to ponder.

The current stats show that almost one-in-five Tests are impacted by a red card, but against that, the need to reinforce good tackle technique and preserve player safety is paramount.

Which is why NZR chief executive Mark Robinson is not sure what the outcome of the vote will be.

“There’s always contrasting views on major matters but, by and large, there’s an acknowledgement that what we’re seeing through three years of work through the Rugby Championship and Super Rugby could be a really positive development for the game and a nod to acknowledging we’re listening to fans,” he said recently.

“We want to make sure red card scenarios we’ve seen in recent times don’t limit the nature of the competition.”

What Robinson does know, however, is that if the vote doesn’t pass, Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship will continue with the 20-minute red card ruling regardless because they believe it is the best way for the game to keep fans hooked.