Five reasons why Super Rugby Pacific is enjoying it's best season in forever

By and large SRP is much more entertaining and even now. Getting more rugby in games now allied with much less TMO interference is a real positive. A major concern however is that more rugby means more injuries to players and extensive casualty wards often long term. I fear that come internationals teams will be decimated. What is the solution ??? Scheduled breaks in games to allow some recovery time ? Shorter games ? Better sports medicine ? Allow increase in reserves ? Extending rest protocols for players ?

What is better:

Closer margins

Higher scorelines

Higher ball in play time

Higher level of competitiveness

Lesser predictability of results

Moana Pasifika finally establishing a home ground

Table standings constantly changing

Introduction of fantasy league tipping

Introduction of player of the year voting

Less interjection from TMOs

Greater undertaking from referees to reduce stoppages during the game

Greater transparency from teams regarding injury updates

More afternoon games

Hearing refereeing explanations and decisions on screen and at the ground

What will be better still:

Fijian Drua breaking their drought and winning on the road

All Aussie teams breaking their drought and winning games in NZ

Reward fans who have Sky Sport/Stan subscriptions and still attend games in person

Entice more fans who have Sky Sport/Stan subscriptions to attend games in person

Having shot clocks at all grounds

Is is too much to ask for better Sky sport commentary team?

Still needs work:

Theme based rounds needs deeper fan engagement from all teams than just putting on a label and wearing new kit

Create a Super rugby pacific app - make it easy for fans to access information on team lists, injury updates, kickoff times, player and game stats, live score updates

The 2010s saw the South African teams pumped by New Zealand teams all the time. They were uncompetitive and the results showed that.

Ben Smith is cooking with gas!

The Mickey Mouse playoff system that made the entire regular season redundant

The playoff system has never been redundant Ben, it was merely important to fewer teams, just those vying for top seed. After that it was simply about qualifying.

The format is arguably worse now. I can see the Canes slumping to a point were the return of key components, like their starting midfield, is now going to happen too late for them due to the reduced playoff spots. So we don’t get the perfect jeopardy like what we got with the Crusaders last year, were deservedly (despite showing they easily had a top 4 team when fit) they missed out because they were even more pathetic than that early team deserved. A couple more bonus points with some better leadership, on and off field, would have given the Crusaders a deserving. As reported last year have we not seen a more perfect finals run in.

Objectively easier finals qualification is better suited to shorter competitions, and we know SR is the “sprint” version amongst it’s rugby equivalents. The Top 14 is probably the worst competition in this respect, with it’s length with a double round robin should have a football styled champion. The Premiership, with it’s smaller base but also double round robin, was pretty much perfectly suited to it’s smaller 4 team playoff. Super Rugby, with it’s much shorter season (smaller amount of games, and most importantly over a much shorter period, would be able suited to a 6 team play off series if it had a comparative round robin. It doesn’t. Playing a bunch of random extra games, within your own division, requires you to expand the qualification reach. Super Rugby was another perfectly balanced competition.

If you want to look subjectively, sure, there are a lot of cool facets of tighter qualification, they just aren’t sensible applicable to SR so you have to be a realist.

I’m pretty sure you yourself have authored articles showing you need to be in the top four come finals time to win Super Rugby.

Competition parity this year just seems to be part luck, but we’ll take it.

The closer parity is simply more about circumstance, I agree. The Lions tour has just as much to do with the consistency and early standards in Australian players performances, and random factors balancing the NZ sides. The predictable improvement of the “Pacific Powers” another key factor, but with the case of extra support like NZR help raise their profile, as in the “Ardie” factor, possibly able to happen a year sooner than it has.

Still, as I have highlighted on previous articles, I wouldn’t be surprised if these results were nearly as predictable as they were last year, and that it was just the fixture ‘creation’ by new management that has artificially created a bit more hype and unrealistic perception on the competitions ‘parity’, in these early stages.

Super Rugby Pacific has done the right thing and got rid of most TMO interventions that have plagued the game over the last few years and impacted one World Cup final.

I wouldn’t have minded if they just put their own spin on WR’s structure. While you don’t go on to describe what the two situations are that remain, one that I think could still have been of value keeping is for the ability for the TMO to rule live.

The fact that several of the WC’s TMO officials were overly zealous in their ability to over rule the onfield decision does not mean there wouldn’t have been value in a good southern hemisphere run contingent from simply adding value and support to the game ref. Take the case last weekend as the perfect example. While I don’t believe it would have been of any real benefit for the Highlanders to have had advantage at the death (the same sequence would have still played out), looking in isolation one can clearly tell that was a live situation where the ref said he was obstructed from making a call, and if the current rules would have allowed, the TMO, like us on TV, could easily have told him to play advantage for the infringement. In another situation that type of officiating could have made all the difference to the quality and accuracy of the outcome. Views of the comp would be a lot different if it was clearly as case that the Highlanders were robbed of a deserved victory.

All told, the game is obviously much better off for what changes have been made with officiating, though this is not really isolated to SR. SR is just the only comp to have start with these.

If you want back in, put your hands up for some real competition, don’t ask for handouts. No conference systems.

We are currently in a conference system Ben, I’m afraid you’re beating the wrong drum there and you own subjective (and flawed) opinions are coming through quite clearly. As spitballed on the article a few days ago, it’s hard to see a true league table where it is either a full round robin or double round robin happen, there is still going to be some amount of divisional derby matchs going on to fill out the season.

Conferences are also the only way forward, so get on board. I would love for SARU to be able to add a couple of regional sides in Super Rugby, using the countries burgeoning playerbase. It might be far easier, and more advantageous, for SA to add to SR than say try to enlarge the URC, or go it on their own with a professional scene. They could leave their clubs to themselves and take control of running a highveld team out of Cheetahs country, and a lowveld team wherever they would like a new attempt at a ‘Kings’ team. I can’t see the clubs ever rejoining SR.

Not surprised the article is well off the mark Ben.

One thing they could do to further improve the ‘jeopardy’ though is to have a separate world club table where each seasons finalists are awarding ranking points going towards selecting who takes part in the biennial (right?) world champs the Champions Cup is hosting in the future. I’d normally expect the government to simply send whoever the most recent finalists are but I reckon creating a way to have those instead be judged by contribution since the last edition (however frequent this idea might turn out) could be a winner this new management will work out and capitalize on. It would also help add to that jeopardy if say ranking points were only allocated to the top 6 of an 8 team finals format.