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Here's how an ex-Wallaby believes Pacific Island countries could creatively join Super Rugby revamp

(Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Wallabies great Tim Horan has called for Pacific Island nations to be part of a new-look Super Rugby model, with their teams based out of cities in Australia and New Zealand. The SANZAAR competition looks set to undergo a major revamp from next year, with New Zealand Rugby having announced a wholesale review into every aspect following the outbreak of Covid-19.

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International travel has been an exorbitant feature of the competition and with many flight paths currently closed off by the coronavirus crisis, there is widespread speculation the teams from South Africa and Argentina will be omitted from an Asia-Pacific model of Super Rugby.

Horan suggested teams from those continents could play in their own conference and potentially meet the best Asia-Pacific teams in a playoff series. The dual World Cup winner told The Breakdown on New Zealand’s Sky TV that Japan would ideally remain involved and eventually the United States should be welcomed.

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RugbyPass brings you Tim Horan’s appearance on The Lockdown, the Sky NZ rugby programme

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RugbyPass brings you Tim Horan’s appearance on The Lockdown, the Sky NZ rugby programme

He also said the Pacific Island teams should finally be given a regular role in a prominent rugby competition, although he accepted they couldn’t be based in their home countries for financial reasons.

“We’ve got to keep supporting them. Whether we potentially have one of them in next year… can you base Tonga in Auckland? Can you base maybe Samoa on the Gold Coast for a period of time? The financial model has to stack up going forward because the broadcast revenue is not going to be there as much as it used to be.”

Horan added it would be important to retain close ties with South Africa and Argentina at Test level. Meanwhile, the man leading New Zealand’s review, lawyer and Blues chairman Don Mackinnon, said a more localised Super competition will be strongly considered, along with the introduction of the Pacific Islands.

He told Newshub the reopening of trans-Tasman travel may prove to be the core element of any competition revamp. “It could be possibly with or without Australia, depending on the (travel) bubble that is being talked about,” Mackinnon said. “A whole lot of issues flow from that, but that’s probably the most obvious immediate change we need to consider.”

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– AAP 

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Flankly 2 hours ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


Borthwick has been in the job for nearly two years, a period that includes two 6N programs and an RWC campaign. So where are the solid foundations that he has been building?

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