Opinion
Last year, the chair of a struggling Super Rugby club told this masthead: “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.”
The line referenced his ultimately doomed attempt to get an early release for a player who wanted to move from a stronger club, but it could also apply to Super Rugby as a whole.
Everyone wants Super Rugby to thrive, or at least claims to, but no one is prepared to make the necessary sacrifices. (The player in question remains on the bench this weekend for the club that refused to release him, stuck behind a Test player.)
The irony of this stubbornness is that resistance to real change could kill Super Rugby completely. The Grim Reaper has everyone in his sights, not just Moana Pasifika, whose demise was effectively confirmed earlier this week.
In fact, as the Super Rugby heavies prepare to gather in Christchurch next weekend for Super Round, they would be well advised to dismiss the delusion that Moana Pasifika’s exit can be easily overlooked.
If the answer to this latest crisis is a lick of paint – a format change or a 10-team full round-robin – they are kidding themselves.
While a full home-and-away set of fixtures would improve the competition, the gain would be fractional, not transformational, if the longer season simply produces the same old group of teams in the playoff positions.
Super Rugby is ill because, for the best part of the decade, it has produced only one winner. Furthermore, in its latest iteration, Super Rugby Pacific, six teams are effectively playoff-bound the minute the squads are announced months before a tackle is made.
Here’s something else to consider regarding the connection between fan interest and competition unpredictability.
This week, former Super Rugby side the Stormers announced they were on track to average 27,000 fans for each home game in the United Rugby Championship (URC). Clearly, they aren’t pining for Super Rugby.
Now, we can argue until we’re blue in the face that the Brumbies or Hurricanes would offer the Stormers sterner opposition than the four struggling Welsh sides or Zebre in the URC, but South African fans have clearly been invigorated by being part of a competition they believe their sides can win.
Some South African derbies in the United Rugby Championship have attracted more than 53,000 fans. Those traditional rivalries obviously hold appeal on their own, but they are being played in a competition featuring a genuine race for the coveted top two spots and the top eight as a whole.
We’re not seeing that in Super Rugby, and I make no apologies for sounding like a broken record when I repeat the following fact: since Super Rugby Pacific was formed, we have had only eight different teams in the top six, with Waratahs and the Highlanders sneaking into sixth place on one occasion each.
That’s a death warrant for any sporting competition in this part of the world.
‘Since Super Rugby Pacific was formed, we have had only eight different teams in the top six.’
Of course, Super Rugby’s obituary has been written countless times before. It has been a great survivor, despite the countless format changes and frequent complaints.
But the big difference this time is that the Wallabies are effectively in the international wilderness at the moment, ranked No.8 in the world in the same neighbourhood as Italy, Fiji and Scotland.
The All Blacks are No.2, although Scott Robertson’s recent sacking shows that not even NZ Rugby believes this ranking to be accurate.
The great defence of Super Rugby over the years was that, yes, it was an imperfect competition but tolerable because it produced strong Wallabies, All Blacks and Springboks sides.
If this is no longer true, the competition will be a high-performance failure, not just one that struggles to get fans through the gate (though broadcast numbers have been encouraging in the past few years).
Therefore, the need for change is pressing.
Surely, those who run and play in the competition can now accept that the rinse and repeat nature of Super Rugby Pacific is a fundamental problem.
Earlier this year, Rob Nichol, the powerful head of the New Zealand Rugby Players Association, suggested to the Herald that the Kiwis returning to the NPC might not be such a bad thing. Super Rugby should be careful about which way the wind is blowing.
Watch every match of Super Rugby Pacific live and exclusive on Stan Sport.
Paul Cully is a rugby columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.
