Rugby union: Forget winning your coronavirus survival competition, let’s bring back the excitement

Melbourne Rebels five-eighth Matt Toomua has been telling tales out of school

Next time you run into an Australian rugby player in the street, tap him on the shoulder and tell him: “Nobody cares who wins Super Rugby AU.”

In fact, you could go so far as to say we don’t really care who wins this weekend’s games.

It’s a made-up competition. A holding-pattern competition. A survive-COVID-19 competition. No one really gives a rat’s who wins it.

What we do want, though, is to be entertained. It might be meaningless rugby, but at least let it be watchable rugby. Running, passing, tackling, tries — all those things that rugby league teams are good at and rugby union teams seem to have forgotten about.

More importantly, we want television executives to be entertained — and convinced that their viewers will be entertained — so there is a chance Super Rugby has a future. So that broadcasters will be interested in getting behind a proper trans-Tasman Super Rugby competition when it gets off the ground next year.

Super snooze-fest

Sadly, the snooze-fests being served up in Super Rugby AU at the moment are doing none of that.

Seven new laws were introduced for the reboot of Super Rugby, designed to limit the number of scrum resets, crack down on time-wasting and encourage attacking kicking. The new rules were supposed to speed up the game and encourage fans towards the edge of their seats.

They haven’t worked.

Television ratings for Super Rugby AU have been disappointing and the paltry number of fans who have bothered to tune in have been disappointed.

To start with, the least said about the 18-all stalemate between the Melbourne Rebels and the Queensland Reds on Friday night the better. The Australian’s rugby editor Wayne Smith was being generous when he described it as a “skill-averse, mistake-ridden contest”.

“Do yourself a favour,” said Smith. “Wipe this game from your memory.”

Saturday’s clash between the NSW Waratahs and the returning Western Force wasn’t much better.

There were 22 penalties and 11 scrums and the Tahs won it scoring just two tries, one of them from a pick-and-drive effort and one a grinding barge-over from lock Tom Staniforth.

In Super Rugby AU matches the previous weekend the ball was in play for measly 30 minutes, which means there was 50 minutes of standing around, setting scrums, lining up penalty kicks, tying shoelaces, twiddling thumbs.

NRL breathtakingly faster

Rule changes introduced for the rebooted NRL competition have actually succeeded in making the game faster. Breathtakingly faster. The action is relentless, the hits harder, you can’t look away for a moment or you might miss something. And as the game goes on, the big blokes get tired, spaces open up and there’s room to move and attack with flare.

What’s more, in an average game of rugby league, the ball is in play for 60 minutes — twice as long as it is in a Super Rugby AU game. Twice as much entertainment.

Rebels five-eighth Matt Toomua has been telling tales out of school, admitting that rugby teams all have a complex system of code words they use when they want to slow down a game or delay the setting a scrum. Words that signal to a player that he needs to fake an injury or tie his shoelace, so there’s plenty of time for thumb twiddling.

But he really hit the nail on the head when he said of last Friday’s Rebels-Reds snorathon: “It was a case of no one wanting to lose.”

Australian Super Rugby players need to forget about winning and losing. It doesn’t matter.

They need to forget about being cautious, take a few risks, throw the ball around, take the attacking option. They need to bring back the excitement. Coaches need to give them to freedom to do it and referees need to stand back and let them get on with it.

Otherwise, when the crowds are allowed back to rugby games, they won’t come, the TV ratings will continue to slump and the broadcasters will look elsewhere. And the door will begin to swing shut on Super Rugby.