The moment I realised I genuinely cared about Super Rugby

The true way to test the enjoyability of Super Rugby Pacific is to watch the Waratahs v Western Force game in Sydney on Saturday without a Wallabies lens.

If you can watch that game and not give two hoots about whether Rob Leota or Nick Champion de Crespigny have gone up in Joe Schmidt’s estimation, then Super Rugby Pacific is well on the way to becoming a standalone product with a genuine future.

That’s the way I’ll be watching it, because it is clear that over the opening three rounds Super Rugby is carving out an identity that is distinct to Test rugby.

The two will never be able to be completely separated, particularly as Super Rugby has a high-performance function in helping players to prepare for Test rugby, but the excellent opening month of Super Rugby has delivered such a level of engagement that the viewer finds him or herself frankly not caring about the Wallabies or the All Blacks.

That will come in time, of course, when Test season rolls around, but at the moment the Waratahs v Force game is all about how the result will affect a Super Rugby table that is congested enough to provide some jeopardy in every game.

The realisation that I actually cared about Super Rugby, in a genuine way, dawned on me after watching last weekend’s games.

Sifa Amone is mobbed by teammates after scoring the match-winning try for NSW in round one.Credit: Getty Images

Perhaps it was the healthy crowd behind the sticks at the Force-Reds game, the singing from the Moana Pasifika crowd, the niggle between the Waratahs-Drua forwards, or the lineout move the Chiefs produced against the Brumbies, but there was the unmistakable sense that the teams taking part in Super Rugby Pacific deserved my undivided attention, rather than just being seen as vehicles for a Test season some months off.

Of course, we are all still guilty of looking at individual performances and wondering about the Test implications, but if Super Rugby Pacific continues to grow, then it might become just a regrettable habit.

And, at least judging by the broadcast numbers from New Zealand, Super Rugby is growing. Sky this week confirmed that the audience over the first three rounds is up 12 per cent on last year, which itself delivered double-digit growth.

The Blues-Hurricanes game attracted 639,000 viewers in New Zealand alone, almost 100,000 more than the Warriors v Raiders game from Vegas, for those who would have you believe the NRL has usurped rugby across the Tasman.

Australian broadcast numbers are more closely protected, but it’s not a stretch to say there has been a degree of general positivity about the start of the season that not even Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii’s sore toe has dampened.

The belated formation of the Super Rugby Pacific commission has helped – the small things such as teams providing full injury lists really do quickly add up into big things in terms of engagement levels.

But the big change is that Super Rugby Pacific feels different to Test rugby because it actually is different. The high-scoring games and ragged defensive lines haven’t occurred by accident.

Super Rugby Pacific stars in Sydney at the season launch.Credit: Getty Images

Driven by Rugby Australia and New Zealand Rugby, every law tweak pioneered in Super Rugby in recent years has been engineered to bring fatigue back into the game, and they are working.

The late summer weather is also playing a part, but the early evidence is that Super Rugby is actually more entertaining to watch than Test rugby (we see you France, with your 7-1 split this weekend), as well as supplying a series of close contests (of the five games last weekend, four were decided by five points or fewer).

Of course, it would be easy to criticise Super Rugby as lightweight rugby ill-suited to the task of making Test players – but that is dinosaur thinking.

Take a look around the world. Rugby’s well-documented financial problems aren’t coming at Test level, they are occurring because revenues at the competition level aren’t matching the costs.

As a result, the game is now stuck in a doom loop of Test rugby effectively having to subsidise the level below, leading to the devaluation of those competitions and the need for more subsidisation.

That has to be broken, and Super Rugby Pacific has taken a decent first step.

Watch all the action from the 2025 Super Rugby Pacific season on Stan Sport, the only place to watch every match ad-free, live and on demand.