Braydon Ennor of the Crusaders runs away from JJ Engelbrecht of the Stormers. Photo / Photosport
Braydon Ennor of the Crusaders runs away from JJ Engelbrecht of the Stormers. Photo / Photosport
OPINION
In the next few days, plans to create a 12-team Super Rugby competition in 2022 will be confirmed and the process of building a radical new professional landscape in the Pacific region will begin.
Pasifika Moana and Fiji will be announced as probable new entrants to Super Rugby –told they will join five teams each from New Zealand and Australia if they can prove their financial sustainability and build satisfactory player rosters.
And finally, after 14 years of an ill-conceived expansion strategy that saw Super Rugby bloat from 12 to 14 teams, then to 15, reaching 18 at its nadir before shrinking to 16, the Pacific region will have a lower-cost, easier to follow, sustainable competition.
Its geographic coverage will not only deliver a vastly reduced carbon footprint, it will allow for all games to be played at fan-friendly times.
Super Rugby will cease to be a testament to greed and folly built on the erroneous belief that TV broadcast money was infinite and directly proportional to the volume of content sold.
Instead it will be a competition that fans want. It will feature players good enough to be there and teams that inspire a genuine following. Quality not quantity will be the mantra.
After 25 years of taking Super Rugby from the best provincial competition in the world to an almost bankrupt, sorry mish-mash of barely functioning teams from around the world who played in mostly empty stadia at random times, executives in this part of the world are being given a second chance to get things right.
The arrival of Covid has been the game's ultimate blessing. New Zealand Rugby are likely to lose about $40 million this year but in truth, they were destined to bleed that much cash over the next five years anyway while they remained locked into a plainly unworkable, unlovable Super Rugby format that had seen crowds drop to levels that were going to force some clubs to the wall.
The pandemic has stripped them of their cash quicker, but so too has it afforded an opportunity for it to be made back quicker.
Braydon Ennor of the Crusaders runs away from JJ Engelbrecht of the Stormers. Photo / Photosport
It got them out of a horrible marriage without being lumbered with legacy alimony payments and now there is hope that having been given a second chance, executive teams won't blow it again.
There is now an obvious path to follow to reconnect everyone with Super Rugby and rebuild the competition's support base and broadcast following.
That path involves leaving the format well alone. Super Rugby started life in 1996 as a 12-team competition and maybe if it had stayed that way, it would still be the premier provincial offering. Maybe if it had stuck with 12 teams, it would be rolling in cash, inundated with fans and have sponsors queuing to get involved.
That's the lesson for everyone to learn second time around – formats are sacred. The best competitions barely, if ever, muck about with their set-up.
Look at the Six Nations. It began life as the four nations and it was a big, big decision to allow France to join and for 90 years things stayed that way.
It took the better part of a decade for everyone to agree Italy could come on board and it seems that there are still plenty who wonder if that was a mistake.
There certainly isn't any desire to bring in any other country in the near future, because in that part of the world, consistency, tradition, history and stability are all valued.
Some see it as being unduly conservative, elitist even and perhaps the Southern Hemisphere has accentuated its desire to innovate its rugby competition as a means to differentiate itself from the North.
But it didn't work and now what the game here needs more than anything is a decade, maybe two decades or possibly even three, when Super Rugby is allowed to gather a bit of steam simply through the familiarity that comes with longevity. Fans don't want to learn how it all works every other year. They want to know the teams, the system and the set-up.
There won't be a third chance for Super Rugby. This is it. The next five years are an opportunity the game in this part of the world won't get back.
This has got to work. Fans have to love it, broadcasters want to pay for it and sponsors be all over it.
It is a new beginning and a chance to build something meaningful and lasting by doing almost nothing at all.
