Super Rugby 2020
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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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No doubt NZR just wants to get some revenue generating rugby in this year. I wouldn't go worrying about the future being informed by whatever frankenstein they come up with for the remainder of 2020.
I would be worried if they pointed to increased crowds as a sign of success. I think as soon as people can go watch any sport they'll turn up in droves. I certainty will be.
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@antipodean said in Super Rugby 2020:
No doubt NZR just wants to get some revenue generating rugby in this year. I wouldn't go worrying about the future being informed by whatever frankenstein they come up with for the remainder of 2020.
I would be worried if they pointed to increased crowds as a sign of success. I think as soon as people can go watch any sport they'll turn up in droves. I certainty will be.
Yep I think you are 100% right on all of the above.
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I have some serious concerns about some of the options being floated for 2021 and beyond. If the last 15 years of super rugby have taught us anything it is that diluting the quality of the player pool by adding new teams is a shit idea and turns people away because the product is worse.
Of the expansion teams only the Jags have been semi successful because they provided a new player pool.
The Aust, Saffa and Japan teams have been rubbish because they were filled with cast off from other teams and guys who shouldn’t have been playing super level in the first place.Adding additional NZ teams seems nuts. We don’t have the depth anymore. We will just end up with something that isn’t as good as the NZ super rugby derbies and only moderately better than the top ITM teams playing each other. An islands team is just going to suck resources away from NZ teams too. Especially if it is based in Auckland.
If we are going it alone my preference would be for the 5 existing Super teams to play home and away with a top 2 final.
Then ITM cup and if there is space try and organise a “world club challenge” type thing with other top clubs/franchises from around the world. -
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One thing to take into account, the pull factor (as pointed out by Mannix) is going to decrease, so we should see an increase in talent pool just by those players not fcuking off to the NH. Hopefully for OZ too, tho SA who are apparently European and have the shit Rand, maybe not quite as much.
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@Bones said in Super Rugby 2020:
@pukunui said in Super Rugby 2020:
An islands team is just going to suck resources away from NZ teams too.
Is it though? There are many bloody good PI players playing outside of NZ. Shitloads.
Are they going to flock back though? Will be a big pay cut from what they are getting up north.
I mainly meant financial resources because presumably they aren’t going to be bringing big bags of money to the table.
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@pukunui said in Super Rugby 2020:
@Bones said in Super Rugby 2020:
@pukunui said in Super Rugby 2020:
An islands team is just going to suck resources away from NZ teams too.
Is it though? There are many bloody good PI players playing outside of NZ. Shitloads.
Are they going to flock back though? Will be a big pay cut from what they are getting up north.
I mainly meant financial resources because presumably they aren’t going to be bringing big bags of money to the table.
Ah ok. Well we don't know what they're going to be getting up north (hopefully you include Japan in that).
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@pukunui said in Super Rugby 2020:
@Bones said in Super Rugby 2020:
@pukunui said in Super Rugby 2020:
An islands team is just going to suck resources away from NZ teams too.
Is it though? There are many bloody good PI players playing outside of NZ. Shitloads.
Are they going to flock back though? Will be a big pay cut from what they are getting up north.
A big pay cut from what they were getting up north. I don't think the big money will be there in the next few seasons
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@antipodean said in Super Rugby 2020:
No doubt NZR just wants to get some revenue generating rugby in this year. I wouldn't go worrying about the future being informed by whatever frankenstein they come up with for the remainder of 2020.
I would be worried if they pointed to increased crowds as a sign of success. I think as soon as people can go watch any sport they'll turn up in droves. I certainty will be.
Yes, but that "reset" of the general public's enthusiasm for live sport could form the foundation or provide momentum for whatever comes next (and hopefully the rejuvenation of rugby culture). If people have a great time watching live sport after this, then they'll probably continue to do so in the future.
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Chatted to a contact a Sky Sport this morning,
Sky is hoping If we are at a level 1 lockdown by June 1st , there will be a super rugby comp up and running within 2-3 weeks involving the 5 NZ super rugby teams and depending on the circumstances in Australia in and around border crossing , it could possibly involve the Australian teams...
If all this happens, a Mitre 10 Cup competition will go ahead..
If the Super Rugby comp does not go ahead ,nor does Mitre 10cup rugby..
Much will depend on how Covid 19 plays out. -
@Steven-Harris said in Super Rugby 2020:
If the Super Rugby comp does not go ahead ,nor does Mitre 10cup rugby..
I would have thought some rugby (NPC) was better than no rugby this year? Maybe it's all down to money for Sky.
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Thought I would’ve been missing rugby by now. I’m not.
