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Send South Africa back to Super Rugby to end Champions Cup woes
The Champions Cup has seemingly inherited the problems that plagued Super Rugby in its latter years.
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Instead of a simple, understandable format that rewards teams based on merit and paves the way for one of the best competitions in the world, the Champions Cup has ostensibly devolved into a complicated, cross-border mess.
Thatās not entirely down to the introduction of the South African sides to the competition, of course. The Champions Cup changed its format last year after growing dissatisfaction from Englandās Premiership Rugby and Franceās Ligue Nationale de Rugby due to their āunder-representationā in the tournament.
Expanding the competition to include 24 sides ā up from 20 ā forced EPCR to rethink the format and while six pools of four might have been widely viewed as the obvious way forward, that was going to lead to too long a season and the current monstrosity was born.
If the Premiership and LNR were willing to put their egos aside and admit the new format simply wasnāt sustainable, they could have reverted to 20 teams ā but thatās no longer possible with the introduction of South Africa to the mix.
The United Rugby Championship stakeholders arenāt likely to settle for having any fewer than eight teams represented in the Champions Cup if South Africa are involved, with Ireland, Scotland and Wales all dropping a side for this yearās iteration of the tournament. And if England and France werenāt happy with having just 13 teams collectively involved prior to the format change, they certainly wonāt be willing to decrease that number to 12.
So whatās the solution?
There are, of course, different ways that EPCR could structure the competition ā but all are likely to either result in equally as convoluted a format, or too many undeserving sides earning representation.
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The better option might be to give South Africa the boot.
Thatās not as radical or punishing a suggestion as it may sound ā South Africa shouldnāt be left out in the cold entirely.
Halfway across the world, thereās another competition that still leaves a little bit to be desired in the form of Super Rugby Pacific.
The Oceanic tournament has its fair share of excellent match-ups, but far too often matches are entirely predictable. Australia canāt sustain five competitive top-level franchises and by the time the finals series rolls around ā with eight of the 12 sides taking part ā much of the interest falls away until the New Zealand sides start squaring off.
The competition is also shoehorned into an 18-week calendar (ostensibly to produce a longer season for broadcasters), with two rounds of repeated matches, when a 16-week tournament makes far more sense.
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The best of both worlds could be accomplished, however, by bringing the South African sides back into the fold for the finals series and dropping the extra round-robin fixtures.
There are many ways the new Super Rugby Pacific governing board could structure the set-up of the finals and itās possible that sides out of Japan could also easily be incorporated but the dates match up perfectly at present.
The URC grand final is set to take place on 27 May next year while Super Rugby Pacificās regular season would finish a week earlier, assuming the two additional round-robin fixtures were dropped from the calendar.
The URC schedule could also be tweaked so that the South African sides donāt take part during weekends where South Africa are involved in the Rugby Championship (currently thereās a two-game overlap), with their matches slotted into the gaps created by removing them from the Champions Cup ā but thatās not a necessity. Already, a number of sides in Europe have weekends off throughout the season due to either not participating in the European tournaments or the Six Nations taking place, so it would hardly be a massive adjustment.
The change would allow the Champions Cup to revert to a more palatable format while also adding some extra spice to a relatively bland Super Rugby finals series. It might also hand South Africa a few additional home knockout games, something which currently appears out of the question in the Champions Cup.
Perhaps the four South African sides would join the four top sides in Super Rugby Pacific for a second round of knockout matches after the Super Rugby champion is declared, perhaps you would replace the finals altogether, with the top side in the competition after 11 rounds declared the winner (Blues fans rejoice). With up to five rounds to work with ā assuming no tweaks to the start or end dates of the competition ā there are numerous possibilities worth exploring.
The Champions Cup has always been revered as the pinnacle of European Rugby but that mantle has largely deteriorated over the past two years. The Champions Cup didnāt need a revamp ā at least from the fan engagement side of things ā but it now does. The same can be said for Super Rugby Pacific. The solution seems obvious.
Bring 'em back, Super Rugby feels hollow without them and the Aussie teams need someone to beat.
always going to be a compromise until there is a global season
I loved the old super 12, but thereās no way weād go back to super. Crowds will improve as people learn about the new teams
There's more money in Europe and even though there's a lot of travel, it's still less travel for the Safa sides and more importantly for their domestic broadcasting, all of their matches take place at a reasonable hour for all involved.
Safa doesn't want to go back. In fact, I see their integration with Six Nations (to become Seven Nations) as nearly inevitable at this point. Not saying that's what I want, I'm pretty neutral on it to be honest, but it's what I'm predicting will happen.
The biggest problem with the Champions Cup is the format, but that's something that came out of COVID, not the Safa sides joining. With 24 sides, there could also be 8 groups of 3 with the winner and runner up of each group making knockouts.
For Super Rugby, the issue is that the lack of balance between the 5 legacy NZ sides and the other 7. But I think we need to give Australia time. One change you could make would be a series of cup competitions. In addition to the main Super Rugby competition I'd hold 2 domestic cups as well. Basically bring back the COVID era Super Rugby AU & Super Rugby Aotearoa to an extend. Each Aussie sides + Fiji split into two groups of 3, home and home in your group, then everyone plays the corresponding finisher from the opposite group so the match between the 2 first place finishers becomes the final, winner declared the champions of Australia. You do the same with the 5 NZ sides plus Moana Pasifika.
Alex yes there is more money in Europe but you are looking at it from SA's perspective. There is more and more discontent being voiced by European sides about their involvement.
I cannot see SA joining the six nations as there is increasing calls for other european nations (i.e Georgia) to be involved. Then it will become too big to be able to fit in to the calendar.
What Super Rugby found out is that having teams that are a big geographical distance away just doesn't work for club competitions. I think that SA's involvement in Europe is on borrowed time.
In your dreamsš¤£South Africa is firmly entrenched in the European system both in terms of players in NH sides and in spectator popularity. Australia and NZ have themselves to blame for what you describe as a ālittle bit to be desiredā competition. This World Cup will show the benefits to both the NH and South Africa for that extended competition. Wind the clock back five years and NZ and Australian writers were calling for a competition excluding South Africa and the Argentine. Weāll youāve got it. Now suck up the consequences.
Super rugby as good as itās ever been. Finally no useless lions sharks bulls and stormers achieving nothing all season bar making the better teams travel just to thump them in front of their home fans.
I don't see South Africa staying in the NH comps. While I loved the games that the NZ sides played in South Africa the fact remained that being so far away didn't make for a good competition.
The same is starting to rear it's head in the NH comps and I think the pressure for them to be removed will grow.
A better option is for South Africa to have their Currie Cup and then the top teams play a crossover knockout comp against the top Super sides. From what I have seen the spectator interest in the South African games isn't that great, and the quality isn't nearly as good as when we had the epic NZ v SA sides in Africa.
You might be rewriting history a little bit there, Graham! Few were ever calling for South Africa or Argentina to get the boot from Super Rugby (although there certainly were complaints about the bloated season and convoluted conference system).
Worth noting that South Africa won just 50 per cent of their games against NZ and Australia this year, despite playing all but one of those games in Africa.
Sending SA back to Super for the finals would give them the best of both worlds - the opportunity to play against NH teams throughout the regular season and the chance to face off with SH teams towards the end. Wouldn't that be a good thing for their overall development?