Player drain a threat to NZ viability, time to cut Super team

Should SANZAAR decide to cut a Super Rugby team then the axe should fall in New Zealand.

The Chiefs could merge with the Blues to reduce Super Rugby to 14 teams. Picture: Getty Images

It is time SANZAAR seriously considered cutting a New Zealand team from Super Rugby.

There has been speculation SANZAAR wants Super Rugby to revert to a 14-team competition to get rid of the complicated conference system and allow every team to play each other in the round robin.

The Japanese Sunwolves have been mentioned as potential sacrificial lambs but there are other options: the Brumbies and Melbourne Rebels could merge; South Africa could move another team to Europe; the Argentinian Jaguares could play in an American continental competition.

But no one ever talks about cutting a Kiwi team, presumably because New Zealand is the greatest rugby nation on earth.

But this great rugby nation has a population of just four million and that’s the triumph and tragedy of New Zealand.

For all the expansion and contraction of Super Rugby since the competition started in 1996 the five original New Zealand franchises: the Blues, Chiefs, Crusaders, Highlanders and Hurricanes have remained in place.

The Kiwis have dominated Super Rugby, winning 16 of the first 23 titles. On current form, the Crusaders look set to achieve their second three-peat.

New Zealand has been able to support not just five teams but for the most part, five highly competitive teams.

But New Zealand is beginning to suffer the same kind of player drain to Europe and Japan that has had such an adverse effect on Australian and South African rugby.

In the past, All Blacks have waited until the end of their Test careers to accept lucrative overseas offers but now they are leaving in their prime.

If the player drain continues, and there is no sign of it abating, will New Zealand still be able to support five Super Rugby teams?

Or will they need to cut a team?

Even if NZ could support five teams, does it make any commercial sense to concentrate so many franchises in such a small market?

The New Zealand rugby economy is maxed out. There’s no room to grow.

I would not cut a New Zealand team per se but I would look at merging two sides: the Kiwi Super Rugby franchises are all mergers of provincial teams anyway.

Which team to cut?

The Blues have been at the bottom of New Zealand rugby for several years and the Chiefs are struggling this season.

The Blues are based in Auckland, which has a population of 1.6 million, but Hamilton, where the Chiefs play, has just 169,000 residents.

And Hamilton is just an hour’s drive from Auckland, almost a satellite suburb.

The New Zealand franchise with the smallest population base is the Highlanders, who encompass Dunedin (130,000) but having the Blues and the Highlanders in Super Rugby means the length and breadth of New Zealand is represented.

None of the Kiwi population centres compares to Japan (127 million) or even Tokyo (nine million).

It would be ridiculous to cut the Sunwolves just after the World Cup is held in Japan, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to popularise the game in a major Asian country.

The Sunwolves have shown a new competitiveness this season.

They should have beaten the Waratahs, but then thrashed the Chiefs and suffered a creditable loss to the Blues.

If the Sunwolves could forge a closer relationship with Japan’s Top League teams, they would become stronger on the field and become a more lucrative enterprise.

I accept the Brumbies face similar commercial limitations to the smaller New Zealand population centres but cutting them would leave Australia with only three teams in a country of 24 million.

I would relocate the Brumbies before axing them.

You could argue the Jaguares are a geographic nightmare and offer little commercial value to Super Rugby but if you are to grow the game in the Americas, they need to be in an elite professional competition somewhere.

I’m not sure how many South African teams you could send to Europe before the whole nation decided to leave SANZAAR to participate in northern hemisphere rugby, taking their valuable broadcasting revenue with them.

SANZAAR must be strategic about expansion and/or contraction of Super Rugby.

Where is the best opportunity to grow the game in the southern hemisphere?

Like any strategic investment, it comes down to the numbers and SANZAAR may discover that five simply does not go into four million.