Super Rugby 2020
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@gt12 said in Super Rugby 2020:
Whether it would change your mind or not, I'm not sure I explained it the way I meant either - NZ teams would play each other in the NZ competition first (there is no reason why we couldn't provincial unions here either I guess). From those games (I imagine home and away), the top two would go through to the next stage which involves play offs with teams from other countries.
I'm all about simple. A simple format people understand.
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@mariner4life said in Super Rugby 2020:
@gt12 said in Super Rugby 2020:
Whether it would change your mind or not, I'm not sure I explained it the way I meant either - NZ teams would play each other in the NZ competition first (there is no reason why we couldn't provincial unions here either I guess). From those games (I imagine home and away), the top two would go through to the next stage which involves play offs with teams from other countries.
I'm all about simple. A simple format people understand.
Why isn't that simple? The best two domestic teams go on to Super rugby finals, the next two best go to Super plate (D2 equivalent).
We'd still get plenty of local derbies with a clear path to qualify for the international games, and could get some Japan money.
If it's not that, then I'd suggest we just replace SA with Japan, because I doubt that a transtasman competition will be valuable enough to get enough TV dollars.
Even then, I'm not sure we'd be OK without SA and the money they bring to a broadcasting deal.
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because it's a comp. and then another comp!
And people will whinge that the Hurricanes are better then either of the japanese teams, why aren't they playing finals? etc etc same arguments you see now
I want a simple play each other once, top sides, whoever they are and wherever they come from, play finals.
Japan only works for me if it's their Top League sides. The Sunwolves are dogshit, and made up of guys not good enough to get contracts elsewhere
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@mariner4life said in Super Rugby 2020:
Japan only works for me if it's their Top League sides. The Sunwolves are dogshit, and made up of guys not good enough to get contracts elsewhere
problem was it didnt appear form the outset JR rugby were invested in making the SW a success, either on the field or financially...meaning it was doomed to fail from the start.
If we get buy in form JR, all the better
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@mariner4life said in Super Rugby 2020:
because it's a comp. and then another comp!
And people will whinge that the Hurricanes are better then either of the japanese teams, why aren't they playing finals? etc etc same arguments you see now
True, but fuck Hurricanes supporters anyway (seriously, I see this point).
I want a simple play each other once, top sides, whoever they are and wherever they come from, play finals.
This would be way nicer, but we might need fewer teams - even from NZ.
Japan only works for me if it's their Top League sides. The Sunwolves are dogshit, and made up of guys not good enough to get contracts elsewhere
I agree about this - I'd promote five (historically strong) teams from across the country (assuming SA was replaced by Japan), so probably Panasonic, Kobe, Suntory, then two from Toshiba, Toyota, Yamaha, Kubota. Ideally games would be in major centers, so Tokyo (Panasonic [north], Suntory [west], Toshiba [west] or Kubota [east]), Nagoya (Toyota), and Kobe (Kobelco). I'd probably leave out Coca Cola and Sanix (Fukuoka) plus Yamaha etc because they are from smaller centres.
By doing so, Japan could probably make its competition into three 5 team pools - 5 play super rugby, 5 in white pool, 5 in red pool (these are for the Top league), with one dropping out.
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so it's agreed, we're dropping the Highlanders? And moving the Crusaders to Dunedin to save money on a new stadium? Done
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@mariner4life said in Super Rugby 2020:
15 team comp. Round Robin and finals (top 6)
Harbour
Auckland
Waikato
Taranaki
Wellington
Ta$man
Canty
Otago
And 2 out of BOP, HB, and Counties.Qld, NSW, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth
Never work.
With only 10 NZ teams how could you transparently stop Ta$man ever getting to challenge for the Ranfurly Shield?
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@antipodean said in Super Rugby 2020:
It's unsurprising how we got to this. Super Rugby was an awesome product and got diluted as a product in the search for additional revenue. The faulty formula of more teams = more money + same quality product.
This +1.
Super rugby was actually super when it was the super 12. With the best players not in Europe.
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makes sense, especially from the perspective of you can only pay so many people
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I say keep super rugby, Join with Australia's 5, maybe one more NZ team and maybe an Islands team based in Auckland. The best time was when Super Rugby wasn't too long and the All Blacks joined the NPC for the business end before going on their end of year tour.
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After this year's 'what ever rugby we can squeeze in' the plan, according to paywalled Herald
"Exclusive: Phil Gifford
Super Rugby tossed into the dustbin of history. As many as eight professional New Zealand teams playing in a competition, that may nor may not involve Australia or Fiji, with a name that will be as far away from "Super Rugby" as possible. No more long distance flights to play in Buenos Aires or Durban. And a huge arm wrestle over provincial rugby.That, according to reliable sources inside New Zealand Rugby, is the immediate future for the game in this country.
At the heart of the plans, to be thrashed out in a hurry in the hope of some rugby being played before the end of the year, is a determination to keep All Blacks playing in New Zealand. "We don't want the Brazil model," an NZR official told me this week. "Where all your top players are in clubs offshore. We're determined to keep as many of our All Blacks here as we can."
Super Rugby, it's now conceded at NZR, has been a wounded, dying beast in this country since 2007, when our best 24 players were unavailable for the first two months of Super Rugby, but instead were working on All Blacks conditioning programmes.
Weird expansions, to Japan and Argentina, and contractions, like dumping the Western Force, have been singled out by some commentators as the causes of Super Rugby's malaise.
But in New Zealand they were just distractions.
The withdrawal of the best All Blacks was not only a disaster on the field, where many of the returning players weren't match hardened and suffered injuries, but also a slap in the face to fans, who had been told for 11 years they were watching the best club competition in the world, and now saw it used as just a feeder to test rugby.
The number of people watching Super Rugby on Sky television plummeted by a disastrous 29 per cent. In the key area of males aged 25 to 54, average viewing figures for the top 10 games dropped from 101,700 in 2006 to 68,800 in 2007. The number of fans lost has never been fully won back.
It's taken a pandemic to set an upheaval in train, but there will be a new competition anchored on our five existing franchises, which could expand to be the Superb Six, the Magnificent Seven, or the Great Eight. Hopefully some marketing gurus will find better names than mine.
The idea of strong New Zealand teams playing local derbies every weekend has an obvious appeal.
Would it be even stronger if the teams were based on rugby's provinces, some of whom have been established and known for well over a century?
Probably, but the demands for a return to tribalism in our rugby seem to be heard mostly from Auckland critics, who were silent when, in the early days of Super Rugby, the Blues were filling up Eden Park and winning titles. The worse the Blues got, the more tears started to be shed for the good old days when Auckland made Eden Park a provincial fortress, and the players drove trucks and pushed pens in offices when they weren't playing.
I hate to bring reality into the conversation, but those days went out the window when players started being paid, and that genie will never go back in the bottle.
In professional sport, which rugby has been for 24 years, fans around the world want winners, and they want stars, and they want success, more than they want geographical identification.
You've only got to look at America, still the world's professional sport epicentre. As just one example, the Dodgers baseball team had been the pride of Brooklyn for 75 years before being sold, moving to the opposite coast, and becoming the Los Angeles Dodgers, where, since 1958, they've been reinvented as the hometown team.
Still, the hardest call, and the most bitter discussions, in our rugby now will be over exactly what happens to what is currently the Mitre 10 Cup, which would continue to be played after the new top tier professional club competition was over.
"We can't, and we won't, turn provinces like Canterbury into fully amateur Heartland sides," an NZR insider says. "But we do need to work out just how many professional teams New Zealand can afford."
Those discussions with the provinces are likely to be brutal, but, like so many of our businesses have found, ugly issues have to be addressed in a Covid-19 age.
Waving goodbye to All Blacks and wishing them well offshore, relying on old school loyalties to drag fans in, and expecting players to be happy if they only get petrol money, are as misguided as the idea that having 18 teams in Super Rugby would somehow make the competition more attractive.
Finding some middle ground between clubs, provinces, and the All Blacks, is the biggest challenge the game has faced here since Kerry Packer tried to buy southern hemisphere rugby in 1995. Finding money of their own saved the All Blacks for the NZRU then. In 2020 the task is infinitely more complex, but it has to be tackled. What's decided in the coming months will shape the structure and the soul of rugby here for the foreseeable future.
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Follow up article to above
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=12328963
Very interesting!
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