Reports of Super Rugby’s death are greatly exaggerated. The competition may be gravely ill, but it still has a pulse as evidenced by the NSW Waratahs’ drought-breaking 41-12 win against the Highlanders in Sydney on Saturday night.
Whether or not the Waratahs’ win – the first by an Australian team against New Zealand opposition in 722 days – was a sign of a turnaround on this side of the Tasman remains to be seen. But it should be enough to convince Australia to remain in the Sanzaar partnership and forget about any fanciful ideas of going it alone.
The suggestion that Australia should ditch its Sanzaar partners and create a national competition in splendid isolation seems to have been borne out of frustration. A national competition of 10 or so Australian teams would be self-immolation for rugby in this country – where it is a struggle to field four quality teams, let alone 10.
A national competition runs the risk of being nothing more than a glorified version of the third-tier National Rugby Competition which would struggle to attract top players, spectators, sponsors and broadcasters.
It would also potentially be an inadequate way to prepare the Wallabies for Test rugby. One of the reasons for the rise of Australian rugby in the late 1970s and 1980s was NSW and Queensland forging closer ties with the Kiwis, not running away from them.
No one can deny Super Rugby has its problems. The previous 18-team format was a disaster and the current 15-team structure is not much better, not helped in any way by Australia’s woeful 40-game losing streak to the Kiwis, which was snapped by the Waratahs.
Yet, Super Rugby, or some version of it, remains the best way forward for Australian rugby. You have to play to your strengths and rugby’s main advantage over its rivals Australian rules football and rugby league is its internationalism.
Football, of course, is the world game but Australian rules football is indigenous to Australia, while rugby league is only played in northern England, southern France, pockets of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Why create a parochial competition when you have the world at your feet?
The challenge for Australia and its Sanzaar partners is to create a new and improved Super Rugby structure which capitalises on the internationalism of the code and also satisfies domestic objectives of the game. It’s easier said than done, but it is worth trying. In fact, there is no viable alternative.
Sanzaar is currently studying potential models for a new Super Rugby competition and nothing has been left off the table. A new competition may involve a trans-Tasman conference, including Japan, with competition with South Africa and Argentina restricted to the play-offs to reduce expensive and wearying travel.
Australia and New Zealand cannot afford to lose South Africa because it lies in the European time zone, making Super Rugby a valuable property for northern hemisphere broadcasters. A great rugby nation, South Africa also helps to prepare the Wallabies and the All Blacks for Test rugby. It is hard to see New Zealand ever severing ties with its old foe.
There has also been speculation about the USA entering Super Rugby to capitalise on the rapid growth of the game in the world’s largest economy. After the recent expansionist catastrophe you would think that would be the last thing on Sanzaar’s mind.
But maybe not. We always think about rugby in terms of northern and southern hemispheres. Perhaps it is time to think about longitude rather than latitude. How about this: three major Super Rugby conferences – the Americas, Trans-Tasman/Japan and South Africa – which play among themselves in the regular season and only crossover in the playoffs to minimise travel.
Why not invite a couple of European teams to play in the South African conference? Two South African teams currently play in European competition. A global Super Duper Rugby competition would potentially generate the revenue that would enable the southern hemisphere nations to keep their talent out of the clutches of rich European clubs.
Maybe that is a little bit ambitious, but southern hemisphere rugby needs to be outward-looking, not inward-looking. If Australian rugby becomes isolated, talk of its death will become less exaggerated.
