Gregor Paul: How to restore Super Rugby's shattered credibility

Covid-19 has caused major disruptions to Super Rugby, but issues with the competition has existed long before the pandemic, writes Gregor Paul. Photo / Photosport

OPINION:

Another year and another Super Rugby season has been rendered almost farcical, lacking in credibility and integrity and as a result the competition that was once the envy of the world may be about to read its last rites.

This time it's no one's fault. The competition is a casualty of Covid – another victim of the Omicron wave.

Already Moana Pasifika have seen whatever slim chance they ever had of being genuinely competitive taken from them by enforced postponements which means they are now having to ram fixtures into midweek slots in an attempt to play catch-up.

If their scheduled game this Friday against the Highlanders is forced to be rescheduled – a distinct possibility given their opponents are dealing with a virus outbreak – then they will face such insurmountable odds as to legitimately declare their maiden campaign effectively over.

Moana, if they are not already, will be playing out the remainder of this season purely for the experience should they be left without a game this week.

They have been the victims of bad luck more than any other team, with Covid seemingly targeting them and whoever they are due to play.

Fate, of course, could yet make other teams Covid victims – something Highlanders coach Tony Brown fully expects after saying last week that the likely winner of the tournament will be the one that best manages their collective health.

His assessment was not intended to deflect from his side's underwhelming start to the season, but to serve as a summation of the facts as they currently stand and to acknowledge that there are factors at play which are largely beyond the control of the coaching teams and players yet will have a dramatic bearing on how this competition plays out.

Highlanders coach Tony Brown and halfback Aaron Smith wearing masks ahead of their Super Rugby Pacific clash against the Blues. Photo / Photosport

If this were a one-off for Super Rugby – a lone year of random intervention that damages the credibility and integrity of the tournament, it could be easily weathered.

The pandemic, after all, has been one giant exercise in sucking up cruel and unforeseen circumstances and promising to bounce back.

But 2022 is not an aberration. The means by which the inequality has been created and the integrity attacked are different, but the outcome is much the same as it has been for the better part of the last seven years, which is that fans have zero faith that the competition is set up to give all participants the same chance of winning.

The question that is now paramount is whether Super Rugby can survive yet more damage to its credibility and integrity.

It can't just keep absorbing the blows year after year and the damage may now be so severe as to believe that it no longer has a viable financial future: that fan interest has been so compromised as to make it unlikely that the competition can generate sufficient revenue in the short to mid-term as to cover its quite considerable fixed costs.

Sponsorship, broadcast and ticket sales are all driven by audience and some of the historic values Super Rugby has known, may no longer be achievable and hence the competition may now have a significantly lower revenue forecast with all the same fixed costs which require teams to generate about $10 million a season to break even.

Having mucked around with the format so many times since 2016 and enabled teams lower on the table to host play-off games to appease broadcasters, Super Rugby has, in the eyes of Kiwi followers, morphed into an abstract series of games rather than a cohesive, serious competition.

That pervading lack of faith has seen fans become more interested in specific contests rather than the overall competition.

Beauden Barrett missed the Blues' last game after testing positive for Covid-19. Photo / Photosport

Interest will spike when the Blues play the Crusaders but there is no sense of the competition-building drama, intensity and storylines as it builds towards a crescendo. It's a scenario which limits its ability to grow its future income and nor is it apparent how this damaged brand can fix itself.

Fans simply don't trust that the team which wins was the best in the competition and for the players and coaching staff, the damage has manifested in two distinct ways.

The first is that a kind of unconscious mental softness has developed: one where New Zealand's teams know the intensity of games against the Australian sides will be less and that the accuracy of their performance can drop without the same punishing consequences should they be a little sloppy against a domestic opponent.

The second problem is that some players may carry with them a sense of injustice that tells them they won't be fairly rewarded for giving everything they have.

There is nothing anyone can do to address the integrity and credibility issue this year, but if New Zealand wants mentally tougher players and fans to be engaged for the duration, then some kind of campaign will need to be launched to re-sell the competition as one with integrity and credibility.

And even then it is going to be a slow and painful fight to regain the hearts and minds of fans who have all but given up believing Super Rugby is an authentic test of character and resolve.

It took seven years to destroy the credibility of Super Rugby, but in all probability, it could take double that time to restore it.