What constitutes the biggest threat to the All Blacks in World Cup year has become quite the competitive category.
There’s the obvious, which is France and Ireland, particularly the latter who have surpassed the Hulk as the most dangerous green thing on the planet and it looks, right now,that only their capacity to self-destruct stands between them and the Webb Ellis trophy.
Then of course there is this whole circus around the All Blacks coaching appointment process, which isn’t going to scramble player and management minds to the point they can’t perform, but is certainly going to infect the set-up with some negative energy and serve as a distracting force.
But what has possibly been missed, because it has been sold as a regenerative and game-enhancing initiative, is the possibility that the biggest risk the All Blacks face this year is playing Super Rugby under yet more experimental laws not all of which are likely to be adopted globally ahead of the World Cup.
If the World Cup is going to be played on Venus, it’s best for everyone to practice on Venus.
But having decided to introduce some trial variations in Super Rugby, such as enforcing hard time limits on set-piece, conversions and ruck ball, forbidding defensive halfbacks to advance beyond the tunnel of the scrum and some more amendments around red card adjudication, New Zealand’s players could find they are preparing for this Venus World Cup on Mars.
There is no criticism of the trial laws for they all make sense, and they are all welcome introductions which will almost certainly enable Super Rugby Pacific to create aerobic and high-skilled contests.
But the problem, which has so often been seen in the past, is that while the Southern Hemisphere has always been willing to offer up Super Rugby as the global game’s communal petri dish, the Northern Hemisphere has sat back, watched things play out under experimental laws on the other side of the world and then mostly rejected adopting them permanently.
This has long been the story of the global game – a round-headed North able to resist a Cavalier South where minds are more open to innovation and experimentation because they have to be.
Ref Ben O'Keeffe gives Pablo Matera of the Crusaders a yellow card during the Super Rugby Pacific match, Crusaders Vs Reds, at Orangetheory Stadium, Christchurch, New Zealand, 27th May 2022. Copyright photo: John Davidson / www.photosport.nz
The audience demand for rugby played at speed and in space is that bit greater than it is up North – no one beneath the Equator gets their rocks off purely at the sight of a rolling maul.
Super Rugby was conceived as a for-TV project back in 1995 and from its inception has been willing to adapt the laws – be it through temporary trials or interpretation - to better reflect the speed, size and power of the modern athletes of the professional age.
Whenever World Rugby has wanted to see how a rule tweak here and there would play out, it’s been able to use Super Rugby as the testing ground.
It’s supposedly been a mutually beneficial arrangement. Super Rugby gets to play under laws that appeal to the players and fans looking for a particular type of entertainment, and World Rugby builds real data to determine whether these innovations deliver the outcomes they were hoping for.
But the problem with this set up has been the lack of compatibility between the two hemispheres in terms of what style and speed of rugby they both want to play.
What works for Super Rugby doesn’t necessarily suit the rest of the world, particularly the UK and Ireland where much of the season is played on heavier pitches and impacted by inclement weather that often turns contests into a battle of attrition.
The odd thing gets changed every few years – the global introduction of the goal-line drop out and the 50-22 kicking rule - but nothing fundamental: nothing that materially changes the essence of the contest.
And this is why it hasn’t always been in Super Rugby’s best interests to readily volunteer to experiment with law variations, and why it’s a concern for the All Blacks that the competition this year will have a number of significant innovations.
Players down here will get used to playing under Super Rugby’s trial laws and then come July, when the test programme kicks off, they will inevitably have to adjust to the different laws that will be in operation for test matches.
Again, a bit like the big top antics around the All Blacks coaching appointment, this isn’t necessarily going to be enough to detail the World Cup campaign, but it is yet another hurdle for the players to overcome.
And if anyone is uncertain about that, they should recall the events of 2008 and 2009 which had a massively detrimental impact on the All Blacks.
When World Rugby wanted to wildly experiment in 2008 and 2009 with 13 law changes, which included allowing defensive teams to pull down rolling mauls, no requirement to match numbers in the lineout and reducing most infringements to free-kicks, Super Rugby jumped at the chance.
These Experimental Law Variations were in force during Super Rugby, but not the June test series that year. They were then re-introduced for the Tri-Nations and dropped for the end of year tour to the UK and back in play for Super Rugby in 2009.
While the All Blacks were impacted by a few major injuries in 2009, there is no doubt they were affected by constantly jumping between versions of rugby that were materially different.
The changes to this year’s Super Rugby laws are not on the same scale but there’s no doubt that they present yet one more threat to the All Blacks in World Cup year.
