Super Rugby 15. Case Study: Why nothing should ever be designed by committee

errlloyd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr5NG2i-Fwg

The proposal

Next year's Super Rugby looks like it's going to be an absolute mess. 18 teams, divided into 2 groups, one with 10 teams, the other with 8, each conference in 2 conferences. The South African group will include the new teams, one Japanese, one Argentine and one more South African.

The current 10 Kiwi and Aussie teams will be in the other group, in Kiwi and Aussie conferences, but that doesn't seem certain. The 8 quarter finalists will be the 4 group winners, then 3 wildcards from AUS / NZ and 1 wildcard from SA / Other.

The matches they would play are kind of hilarious. You would play 6 v your own conference, 4 v the other conference in your group and 5 v the other groups teams.

So for example. A South African team will play two teams in their conference twice. They will then play of the teams in the other group, and finally they will play half of the Aus / Kiwi teams.

And Aus or Kiwi team will play one team in their own conference twice, all but one of the teams in the other half of their group, and then 5 out of 8 of the new teams.

God only knows what weekends will have matches and what weekends will have buys.

A final overall table will decide seeding.

The system makes no sense - but based on my limited knowledge it looks something like how sports work in America. How can you have any consistency or fairness in results when there is some poor team out there who will have to play Crusaders twice (for example) and a team they are competing against may not have to play them at all.

The problem

To me the main difference between Europe and the Southern Hemisphere (+Japan), is that our domestic teams also compete in our upper tier competition. They're trying to create an upper tier competition separate from domestic rugby. So they won't commit to running a 37 week competition (top 14 + H/Cup combined).

So in Australia they are looking for a bread and butter competition for the only level of professional club players. They want a lot of games.

In Argentina they think the reason they lose against other sides internationally is their players are dispersed everywhere, so they just want at least one franchise to help them repatriate their squad.

I think Japan is the same as Argentina.

In South Africa and New Zealand, they have very high level functional domestic leagues. So they ideally want a short competition to run as a some sort of glamorous money spinner, or something. South Africa recently banned Springboks from the ITM though.

Because of their different aims they have come up with this monster. It is a competition with a valueless knockout stage after a random series of matches in the early phase.

The other problem is the sheer geography. Remember, if this was a game of risk, Europe would be getting us 5 reinforcements per turn, they'd be getting like 12, Aisa, South America, Africa and Australasia. It is as mental as us including a team from Georgia and a team from Chicago in the H/Cup.

My solution

What I would suggest is they forget this whole idea of conferences groups and a knockout stage and realise they have reached the saturation point and there should be two different levels of competition. I think we need two more teams to get us to 20. So Found an extra team in Argentina (one was daft anyway), allow in that Singaporean outfit they were talking about and create two 10 team leagues. 2 Arg, 6 SA, 2 Asian in one. 5 Aus 5 NZ in the other.

Those two leagues play a standard 18 game season, home and away. The top 4 from each league can go into a play off against each other, or qualify for a H/Cup style competition the next year.

The problem with that is probably money. All the money would be balanced towards the first of my two leagues. How long before they started looking for the bigger slice?

sydthebeat

Wow, gonna need to read that s few times before i reply.

Excellent write up though!

Swiwi.

I think the problems here errlloyd were very difficult to overcome: firstly SA insisted on a 6th team, it fact they were completely non-negotiable on this fact. Secondly, everyone wanted to include Argentina, despite it not helping in terms of geography. The PIs are a mess - just look at the Samoan team problem - so they were out. Then you have the Asian interest. The money comes from SA, because of their time zone among other things, so an ANZACS league wasn't possible. And money has to be found to keep some of the most talented players in the world in the SH. There was also the need to keep the season length reasonable, and so on and so on.

I agree it seems a shambles, but we'll wait and see how it pans out.

NB: listening to that video (admittedly by a Kiwi) brings back the old chestnut of lumping the PIs into 1 generic pool. A bit like saying we'll create a Celtic team, made up of Scottish, Irish & Welsh players and treat it the same as Leinster, Munster, Toulon etc.

errlloyd

Swiwi. wrote: »

NB: listening to that video (admittedly by a Kiwi) brings back the old chestnut of lumping the PIs into 1 generic pool. A bit like saying we'll create a Celtic team, made up of Scottish, Irish & Welsh players and treat it the same as Leinster, Munster, Toulon etc.

Yeah I thought that video was very unfair on Japan. I think they have the potential to maintain a SuperRugby team. I don't think it matters if its' galacticos from all over the world with some indigenous players. If Toulon has taught us one thing, it's that local fans will support internationals playing in their city.

Also (and this is not a jab at the ABs) I think many top PI players already play in Kiwi and Aussie teams, so I think that progression to professional already exists for many of those guys. Japanese players don't have that access. I think a specific team for them would just be an academy which could be looted by wealthier teams.

Also what did the commentator mean by beat "teams like England"...

Pudsy33

The Pacific teams have beaten all other northern hemisphere teams bar England.

Bridge93

Did I hear the Argentinian team are applying the same rule as Oz and NZ? Thaf being only players playing at home will be included in the national side.
Would that not in theory make the one club side the national side too?

ArmaniJeanss

I can see why people might have a problem with the proposed uneven conference system, though personally I think its fine. Maybe its because as a fan of NFL I got used to uneven conferences back when it was 5-5-4, but honestly its not a big issue.
Also the idea of playing some teams (that may be weaker teams) more often than others isn't anything new, its always been a factor in the Super 15 structure. It can lead to unfairness in a given season, but theres lots of positives to it also.

I actually think your solution is far worse tbh; if I understand it correctly your plan would increas the regular season from 15 to 18 games, yet the Aussie and NZ teams never get to play any teams outside NZ and Oz during the regular season. That kinda defeats the whole point of the tournament.

Also don't see whats 'valueless' about the proposed knockout stages, seems fine.

sydneybound

Very interesting video however it was somewhat over negative about the tournament and especially towards Japan.

Including an Argentinan team is required while SA are the tournament cash cow so that team is a given too.

What I wasn't overly keen about in the video was the example of when Fiji played Samoa in Auckland they got 60,000 fans while Japan V the Maori's they got 20,000. I want a PI team to be included however I don't think this team would get close to 20,000 for their home games in Auckland. In Sydney or other cities in they would get far less so economically I'm not sure how viable this team would be. However that said I'm desperate that a PI team enters the tournament. What I wasn't overly impressed by was running down of the Japan team. I think with the 2019 world cup coming up this is a great time to grow the game there. Having a super rugby team will increase the amount of Japanese players playing at a much higher level. Let's face it they must be bringing a heap money to the table and like Argentina in the rugby championship I'm sure it will take them a year or two but they should get competitive.

Yes the Argentinean coach said he old only pick home based players. Something along the lines of pick your country or the money.

zambrotta11

Another thing that isn't fair about comparing the time Fiji played Samoa in Auckland and the time Japan played the Maori's is the fact that Fiji v Samoa was a rugby world cup game so there would be a great deal more interest and even more neutral supporters. For example, my girlfriend and her family went to that game and they are not Polynesian and as a matter of fact they are not even really rugby supporters! They just went because it was the rugby world cup and I would say a fair amount of the people who went that day were in the same boat.

endabob1

The problem is that you have 3 unions trying to do what is right for them & their development of rugby and building of a national side. Each of their requirements are very different and add into this the pressure from the IRB on SANZAR to include the emerging nations into expansion plans as they look to do the same development on a global scale.

With Australia, the fact that they do not have a Currie cup or NPC like SA & NZ means they need Super Rugby to be all encompassing. They need it to have lots of Derby games because they draw in the crowds & generate revenue, it must be big enough for it to compete with NRL & AFL. It also needs to be long enough to give their top players a full season worth of games and finally it needs to give them an Australian champion!!

The problem is that in NZ & SA they already have domestic competitions and could easily make it more like a Heineken Cup because there is already growing criticism of the devaluing of the Currie Cup in SA… well they could do this if it weren’t for the money, the provinces and SARU (in SA) are now reliant on the TV revenues. SA also has the political problem, as they look to expand the game into black areas, they wanted a 6th franchise even though they struggle to have 5 competitive teams (An SA side has finished bottom of the log in 6 out of the past 8 seasons)

The expansion to 18 teams has some good points. We now have an Argentinian team playing at a higher level, but what I will say is that, an all Argentinian based team competed in the Vodacom cup in SA for 4 years as a Pampas XV winning it once but this is a level below Currie cup, so unless Argentina bring back some European based players this will be a very difficult competition for them.

It has become an absolute frankenstien type monster of a competition now I would have liked to see it go to 20 teams with a complete new conference of Argentina, Japan the 6th SA franchise and a couple of Island teams but that would mean significant investment from the IRB in the island teams;
You could keep all factions happy by maintaining the separate Australian division going with 4 pools/Conference, top 2 out in each pool. Games outside of your own pool could be kept to a random 3 from each of the other pools to reduce travel, so 8 games within your own pool plus up to 9 away games, so 17 game regular season with 3 more play offs.

The idea of 2 divisions I do not think will float with the Aussies, although I think it’s a very plausible solution.

CatFromHue

This Super Rugby structure was the inspiration for Aslan's Crazy World......