Mark Tele'a celebrates scoring with Blues teammate Taufa Funaki. Photo / Photosport
Bumper crowds in the last round can’t disguise the problems facing the competition; how admitting teams from the Land of the Rising Sun could revolutionise it; and why the NRL remains asleep at the wheel when it comes to New Zealand.
There was almost something Rocky-esque about the most recent round of Super Rugby Pacific.
The bloodied ageing champions clambered off the canvas and, against all predictions, the two New Zealand derbies racked up impressive crowds reminiscent of the good old days.
A rocking audience of 26,000 thrilled to a frenetic contest between the Blues and the Hurricanes while an hour later almost 20,000 fans conspired to lift the roof off Forsyth Barr Stadium as the Highlanders added to the Crusaders’ season of misery.
In fact, had you wandered into Eden Park last Saturday, you might have felt like you were in a time warp.
Brilliant afternoon early winter sunshine, the Blues playing in a jersey they once used to always win in, kids running on to the park after the game to get autographs and selfies.
It was heart-warming stuff for the rugby romantics, especially in the face of relentless criticism of the competition’s flaws and constant unflattering comparisons to Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL).
Cop that, said Rocky.
So on a weekend when the Warriors dug a deeper hole for themselves, Super Rugby deservedly bathed in some fine autumn sunshine and offered hope there’s some life in the old girl yet.
Sorry to be the party-pooper then.
I am unconvinced Super Rugby is back. And that has nothing to do with the spectacle offered last weekend.
The rugby this season has been impressive and good to watch.
But it – and last Saturday – can’t disguise the competition’s two key structural deficiencies.
There are still too few teams overall and too many being included in the playoffs.
And rugby politics will kill off the obvious path to transforming the competition.
Let me explain...
A few weeks ago, Sports Insider started hearing whispers out of Australia of moves to reintroduce a Japanese element to Super Rugby.
But not in the form of one team like the SunWolves, contrived as a semi-representative team and never wanted by then key Super Rugby stakeholders, South Africa.
No, this would be the top four teams out of the burgeoning Japan Rugby League One competition, potentially with star players like Richie Mo’unga, Beauden Barrett, Joey Manu and a bevy of World Cup-winning Springboks stars, alongside big-name coaches and including Sir Steve Hansen and Robbie Deans.
I immediately took notice, mainly because it made compelling sense on virtually every level.
The competition is currently in dire danger of losing two teams – the bankrupt Melbourne Rebels, whom Rugby Australia are anxious to rid themselves of, and Moana Pasifika, who remain plagued by rumours of financial instability (although latest suggestions are these have eased in recent times).
But even if both were to fall over, the addition of four Japanese teams would lift the number of sides to a more prudent 14 in total (ah, the return of Super 14!) including five Kiwi teams, four Australian and the Fijian Drua.
That would permit a more fan-palatable six-team playoff series instead of the nonsensical eight sides we have now participating in the finals.
And importantly, it would ensure seven matches per round, offering broadcasters more product and finally allowing Super Rugby to compete with the NRL by having a weekly Sunday match.
Japanese time zones are friendly with New Zealand and Australia, allowing for a seamless weekly round of matches across three days every week.
It’s a win-win for everybody.
Seemingly it seems.
Except the chances of it actually happening are next to none, mainly because competing national agendas and selfish thinking will once again conspire to halt the bleedingly obvious from happening.
Pro-Japan advocates point towards the agreements the Australian and New Zealand national unions have in place with their Japanese counterparts as another reason why we should be able to make this competition format happen.
And Japan’s League One plays out at the same stage of the season as Super Rugby Pacific (the Japanese finals start this weekend).
But reality is that we may have probably missed the window.
Japan is now three years into a new competition that is going from strength to strength and attracting the world’s best players – 13 of the 36-strong World Cup-winning Springboks play in League One – and coaches.
It is beginning to rival France’s Top 14 competition in profile and allure for players.
By inviting Japan to field its top four sides in an expanded Super Rugby format, we’re effectively asking them to abandon their burgeoning premier competition for the benefit of just four of their teams.
There’s no upside in that for Japan.
The reality is that the best we can hope for is an adjunct to Super Rugby with either the winners playing the Japan League One champions annually, or, at best, the top four from each competition playing each other.
Either way, it will retain a fragmented season.
Sadly, Super Rugby is likely to remain a one-legged boxer valiantly fighting above its weight but still ultimately doomed to fail due to its structural challenges.
Afternoon kickoffs will remain a novelty because they work for crowds but not broadcasters and that tension is not going away.
For every Aucklander delighted with last Saturday’s 4.30pm kickoff, there’s a punter elsewhere in New Zealand wondering why the hell the top-of-the-table game wasn’t on at a TV viewer-friendly time of 7.30pm instead of the less appealing Crusaders-Highlanders clash.
And how much were the two big crowd figures affected by the fact both actually had a heap riding on them – the competition lead at Eden Park, and the compelling desperation for a win that pervaded the air in Dunedin.
Play both derbies at the start of the competition, or when less was riding on the outcomes, and the crowd figures would not be so high.
Super Rugby feels alive right now simply because we’re finally at the point of the competition where each match does legitimately mean something.
It just takes too long to get to that point.
At times, the Kiwi media, including myself, are guilty of overselling the “battle of the codes” narrative between rugby union and league.
It could well be there is nothing to win as both codes struggle to retain future relevance with Kiwi sporting audiences.
I have long maintained that despite its lip service around a second NRL side in Aotearoa, the NRL is largely blind to the opportunity on this side of the ditch due to its bloody-minded parochialism towards Australian interests.
It surfaced again this week with the Sydney Daily Telegraph trumpeting an exclusive that the NRL has decided on a team from Papua New Guinea (see last week’s Sports Insider for the confounding logic behind that one) and Perth as the 18th and 19th teams to be admitted to the competition.
In seeking Telegraph readers’ views via a survey, the paper didn’t even bother to list a Kiwi alternative.
The NRL’s voluble chair Peter V’Landys is either a master at playing to the crowd, or is genuinely blindly parochial. He never mentioned the prospect of a Kiwi team in the entire 1000-word plus story.
The current form slump suffered by the Warriors isn’t helping sustain momentum and support for a second Kiwi NRL franchise but the plethora of New Zealand stars across club rosters (including those who are putting the Warriors to the sword, like Joey Manu last weekend) counterbalances that.
However, it’s hard to suppress the feeling that sometimes the NRL powerbrokers give every evidence of not really caring about what happens to the game over here.
The appointment of a rookie referee who was out of her depth for last Sunday’s important clash with the Roosters is a case in point.
The Roosters were on a different stratosphere and would have won anyway, but the poor calls from a young referee and the unfathomable logic from the NRL Bunker took long-suffering fans of the Wahs back to the bad old days.
Referee Kasey Badger had already drawn fire for the previous week’s display.
Putting Badger in charge of a game in Sydney involving a powerbroking club who would have lacerated her in the press had the decisions the Warriors had to cop fallen against them was bordering on irresponsible.
A final comment on the Warriors... if they are missing any one player, it’s their iceman Marata Nuikore, who is yet to play this season due to a foot injury. The rugged forward’s return can’t come fast enough for the Mt Smart faithful.
The women’s game is back in the spotlight with the world champions, the Black Ferns, finally taken out of mothballs.
The re-emergence of the Ferns comes as World Rugby look to unbundle the commercial rights around the women’s game.
Football governing bodies Fifa and Uefa have already jumped on that bus, but World Rugby will be slightly more careful, agreeing bundled rights deals “still make sense” in certain markets.
In the past, broadcasting and sponsorship rights for the women’s World Cup have traditionally been bundled together with the men’s tournament as an “add-on”.
But that could change in next year’s World Cup in England, where the Black Ferns will defend their crown.
The UK’s big commercial market has convinced World Rugby to unbundle “where we can”.
“We’ve got brand partnerships and broadcast relationships that are specific to women’s rugby and/or the 2025 Rugby World Cup,” chief executive Alan Gilpin told SportBusiness.
The change won’t affect New Zealand, where Sky gained future rights to men’s and women’s World Cups in a deal which included selling digital platform RugbyPass to World Rugby.
Aimee Fisher
There it is out of nowhere, one of the most compelling new storylines of the year. Aimee Fisher beats our greatest Olympian, Dame Lisa Carrington, in world-record time in a World Cup event in Hungary. We’re now looking at a New Zealand gold-silver sweep at the Paris Olympics in the K1 500m. But in what order, as the enigmatic Fisher takes on her superstar teammate?
Yellow Fever
The likeable Wellington Phoenix fan club has demonstrated tenacity and resilience eventually has its day, in this case a return home semifinal in front of a sold-out Cake Tin to earn an A-League grand final berth for the first time in the club’s 17-year history. Shirts off!
Carlos Ulberg
Beyond Israel Adesanya, New Zealand now has another potential superstar on the rise in Carlos Ulberg. The 33-year-old Auckland light heavyweight with the delightful moniker of “The Black Jag” won his latest fight in the US, which lasted just 12 seconds. It was his sixth win in a row, earning a ringside handshake from impressed UFC boss Dana White.
All the key NRL fixtures for the Warriors.