The crowds for the Super Rugby Pacific semi-finals will outstrip those for the equivalent fixtures in the United Rugby Championship, which were played last weekend.
Leinster v Stormers in Dublin attracted 15,346 and Glasgow’s “home” semi-final against the Bulls at Murrayfield brought in 17,981. The Leinster v Lions quarter-final a week earlier couldn’t crack 10,000, and even the official attendance in the 9000s was deemed generous by The Times correspondent Peter O’Reilly.
The URC, perhaps more so than Super Rugby, is a competition played out of necessity, but those underwhelming crowd numbers should not lead to any pleasure in this part of the world because they only tell half of a complex story.
Super Rugby’s purpose has always been partly to prepare Australian and New Zealand players for Test rugby. It is, by its own definition, a high-performance vehicle whose value is linked to the success of the Wallabies and All Blacks. Judgment is coming soon in that area.
Ireland, France and Italy will arrive in July, and while there is a snowball’s chance in hell of Les Bleus bringing their best side – despite assertions to the contrary from Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh – all three nations will present formidable challenges in the inaugural Nations Championship.
The new tournament already has its fair share of critics. Some nations, such as France, will rest star players after the long European seasons, which will feed the narrative that the Nations Championship will lack true meaning.
But it is probably best to give the tournament the benefit of the doubt. Once it begins competitive instincts will take over and everyone will want to win it. It will not depose the Rugby World Cup in terms of significance, but that does not mean it will be bereft of meaning.
However, the flaw with the Nations Championship is that it is marketed as a clash of the hemispheres, which isn’t the case.
South Africa and Argentina players are now largely immersed in European rugby competitions. An entirely new generation of players is coming through without the prior exposure at club level to Australians or New Zealanders. They are being shaped by the northern hemisphere, not the south.
The July Tests will therefore be a case of Super Rugby Pacific versus the rest, more than a clash of hemispheres, and no one can escape the gnawing feeling that this isolation is not serving the Wallabies or All Blacks well.
At the very least, it is difficult to quantify what the benefits are for the Wallabies and All Blacks from Super Rugby Pacific. We just don’t know.
By contrast, if we ask, was there a high-performance benefit for the Irish, Scots and South Africans from those URC semi-finals, most reasonable people would say yes.
The South Africans were on hostile territory against two teams stacked with Ireland and Scotland internationals. And while the URC is having a hard time persuading anyone from Dublin or Glasgow that they should care about manufactured rivalries against teams from faraway Cape Town and Pretoria, their national coaches will likely find gold in these encounters.
Is Super Rugby Pacific delivering the same benefits for the Wallabies and All Blacks? At best, we should be agnostic about that theory.
This is why Super Rugby Pacific officials have such difficulty selling the competition’s undoubted success stories – “outselling” the URC semi-finals would be another one of those.
Super Rugby Pacific is operating with a trust deficit among critics and long-time observers. We want the competition to be great, and we want the Wallabies and All Blacks to be top five teams, but we aren’t seeing the evidence yet.
A strong July for the trans-Tasman frenemies – five Test wins out of six – could start to change this narrative, but the opposite is also true.
The stakes are high. A strong push for Super Rugby privatisation is under way, driven by the New Zealand clubs.
Rugby Australia and New Zealand Rugby will be in a position to resist that – and maintain control – if the Wallabies and All Blacks are humming. Super Rugby’s credibility goes on the line in July – there is no way to sugarcoat that.
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.
