Super Rugby’s global expansion plan

Rather than rationalising the new Super Rugby draw by cutting teams, SANZAAR is making it bigger.

Israel Folau of the NSW Waratahs rugby team takes part in a training session in Sydney, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. The Waratahs begin their 2016 Super Rugby season against the Queensland Reds on Saturday February 27 at Allianz stadium. (AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts) NO ARCHIVING

Far from rationalising the new and overly complicated Super Rugby draw by reducing the number of teams, SANZAAR is actually looking to make it bigger.

This year’s Super Rugby competition, which begins on Friday, has been expanded from 15 teams last year — five teams in each of New Zealand, South African and Australian conferences — to 18.

The main driver behind the expansion was the fact that South Africa wanted to add an extra side, the Southern Kings, and was not prepared to cut one of their existing franchises. The solution was to bring in not only the Kings but also the Sunwolves of Japan and the Jaguares of Argentina and then to divide them between two South African conferences of four teams.

But that’s only the beginning of the complications. None of the Australian teams will play Argentina, the Sharks, Lions or Kings this year, while the NZ teams will miss the Bulls, Cheetahs, Stormers and Sunwolves. Next year, the conferences will be reversed. So too with home games. Teams such as the Brumbies, Waratahs and Reds will play eight times at home and only seven on the road in 2016 but in 2017 they will be shortchanged while the Western Force and Melbourne Rebels are allocated eight home matches. Explaining exactly how the competition comes together was likened by senior rugby journalist Greg Growden to deciphering cryptic crossword clues in Latin and the best advice senior Australian Rugby Union official Rob Clarke could give to Australians was “follow your team and it will all become apparent in time”.

Yet now the five-year broadcast deal covering 2016-2020 has finally been sealed, SANZAAR already has turned its attention to how the draw for the next iteration of Super Rugby, in 2021, will look. What they have in mind is nothing short of world domination.

Indeed, the current 18-team arrangement will come to be seen as merely a stepping stone on the way to a competition that involves every major rugby playing country outside of Europe. “While no firm direction has been said, it could well be that by further expanding Super Rugby, you could actually simplify it,” said Clarke.

Argentina might find themselves not as an afterthought in one of the two South African conferences but as one of the mainstays in an American zone involving the US, Canada and Uruguay. Professional rugby is about to start in the US, with five or six teams playing on a home and away basis, thanks to an initiative of USA Rugby and World Rugby.

In 2017, Canada will join the PRO (Professional Rugby Organisation) competition by providing additional teams. By dividing the globe into more manageable conferences — six, or more reasonably five teams in South Africa, five each in Australia and NZ, and four in the American zones, along with Japan, say — SANZAAR could play more intra-zone matches on a home-and-away basis, with the top teams in each then advancing to play-offs.

As it is, the travel component of this year’s competition will have severe welfare impact on the Jaguares and Sunwolves. For years the Force was the most-travelled team in world sport but they have been utterly eclipsed by how much travel lies ahead of the Argentinian and Japanese players.

This is the 2016 itinerary of the Jaguares, for example: Bloemfontein, Durban, two home matches in Buenos Aires, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Tokyo, another two home games, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth followed by three home matches.

The Sunwolves’ itinerary is just as daunting: Tokyo, Singapore, Tokyo, Singapore, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, two home matches in Tokyo, Singapore, Brisbane, Canberra, Tokyo, Pretoria and Durban. Because there are no direct South Africa-Japan flights, three of the Sunwolves’ home games have been assigned to Singapore.

“There were 35 parameters that had to be fed into the algorithm before the computer could begin calculating the draw,” said Clarke. “Things like player welfare, cost implications and equality for all teams. It was a difficult draw.”

Queensland Reds chief executive Jim Carmichael admitted the complexity surrounding the draw was making it hard for rugby authorities to sell the major strength of Super Rugby — that it is the strongest competition in world rugby outside of Test football.

“All those who regularly follow Super Rugby appreciate what a great competition it is but the problem is with the wider community,” Carmichael said. “But that slowly is being overcome … 18 months ago, we were all wondering how strong Japan would be and whether it could stand up in Super Rugby. But since the World Cup (when Japan defeated the Springboks), that’s all changed.”