Rugby: Jedi Mastery vital for numbers game

Blues fans challenge the Crusaders during the round 10 Super Rugby match between the Blues and the Rebels in Auckland. Photo / Getty Images

As Yoda, Jedi Master not Greg Somerville, would say: Super 15 table, hmmm, strange it is.

Going into round 10, the third-best team sat fourth and the fourth-best team was third.

Last week the Blues crept ahead of the Stormers when they secured a bonus point against the Waratahs, while the South Africans had to make do with four points against the Lions.

However, Sanzar's convoluted rules under the conference system meant they couldn't overtake them on the table.

After last night's game the Blues have now vaulted the three teams below them into first, yet under the current rules they could finish the weekend with the second highest amount of points, yet still drop back to fourth.

If you're finding that difficult to comprehend, you're not alone.

All that would need to happen is the Crusaders beat the Highlanders to vault into first place, then the Reds fail to beat the Waratahs.

Under that scenario, the Crusaders will be on either 39 or 40 points, the Blues on 39, the Stormers on 37 (they are guaranteed four points for their bye this weekend) and the Reds anywhere from 35 to 37.

If the Crusaders and Blues finish the weekend on 39 points each, the first point of separation is the competition points accrued from matches between those teams. As the Blues beat the Crusaders in round one, they would go top of the table.

With Sanzar determining that the conference winners take up spots one to three, that could drop the Blues or Crusaders from second, where they would feel by rights that they belonged, to fourth.

That might not mean a lot now, but come the end of the regular season and it has huge consequences on the competition.

Instead of a week off and a home semifinal that the team second on the table is awarded, they would face a home elimination match then travel to one of the conference winners for the semifinal.

It's a complex system that seems to have little going for it other than to ensure each country has some representation in the semifinals - sporting socialism the cynics could suggest.

As an exercise, statistician Paul Neazor went through each year of Super rugby to see the implications, under the four-team semifinal system used, if Sanzar guaranteed a playoff spot between one and three to the highest-placed teams from each country.

He discovered that in 10 of 15 years of Super 12 or 14, teams would have been promoted above where their points total suggested they should be and seven teams who made the semifinals would have been shunted.

In some years the changes would have been profound. In 1998 the fifth-placed Reds would have leaped to third, the second-placed Crusaders would have slipped to fourth and the Highlanders (4th) would have dropped out altogether.

The 2001 semifinals that did not feature a New Zealand side would, under this system, have had the Highlanders in third while the Reds (4th) would have fallen out the back door. The following year, the Stormers would have jumped from seventh to third and the Highlanders would have missed out.

Most shockingly, in 2003, the Hurricanes would have fallen out the back door from third on the ladder, the Crusaders would have gone from second to fourth, the Brumbies from fourth to second and the Bulls from sixth to third.

In other words, it is a system designed to promote anomalies.

Extending the playoffs to six teams is a sound commercial move and it almost guarantees every country will have some involvement, so it begs the question, why did they have to make the system so complicated?