Richie Mo'unga of the Crusaders looks on during the Round 1 Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and the Waratahs. Photo / Getty Images.
Richie Mo'unga of the Crusaders looks on during the Round 1 Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and the Waratahs. Photo / Getty Images.
OPINION:
Super Rugby Pacific is the proverbial shimmering light of promise shining just over the horizon heralding the return of Kiwi rugby dominance and an open game after recent related shocks in the Northern Hemisphere, but the reality may be quite different.
Not to be a Grinch or anything butit probably won't catch fire until the end and it may in fact exacerbate the issues with the New Zealand game that saw the All Blacks struggle severely this year against teams that stubbornly refused to play like them and Australia. As a build-up to the 2023 World Cup, Super Rugby Pacific may be less than optimal for the game here.
If we ignore the ongoing Covid restrictions for a moment and remain optimistic that it goes ahead as scheduled, it will be fresh at least. The impending inclusion of Moana Pasifika and Fiji Drua will see to that. Those two teams have the potential to engage support like few others because there will be nothing contrived about their sense of collective self.
This is by no means an attempt to diminish the importance of the addition of two Pacific Islands teams to what is Australasia's premier domestic rugby competition. The Islands' contribution to the game has been ignored for far too long and there will be genuine excitement at not only what they can do on the field – and in this age of identikit game plans in New Zealand and Australia, that will be highly anticipated – but also who they can inspire.
Richie Mo'unga of the Crusaders charges forward during the round four Super Rugby match between the Crusaders and Highlanders. Photo / Getty Images.
But there is little doubt that two things in particular will detract from the competition: its format, and the All Blacks' graduated return to play, a familiar but increasingly tedious state of affairs which in this case may see last year's New Zealand Super Rugby player of the year Richie Mo'unga miss the first six weeks.
And, like the All Blacks failing to respond to the high-pressure games provided by Ireland and France last month because they couldn't simply hurt them on the counter-attack as they have become conditioned, the two things are related.
Should Mo'unga, who was disappointing at first-five as an early replacement in Dublin and starter in Paris and has a bit to prove in 2022, miss the first 40 per cent of the Super Rugby Pacific round-robin as has been rumoured (and not denied by coach Scott Robertson), it is another indication that those early rounds just aren't all that important in the big scheme of things – and, remember, the top eight teams go through to the play-offs. There are only 12 teams in the competition.
Compared with the intensity of Super Rugby Aotearoa which was an almost literal case of last team standing takes the title after nine weeks of mental and physical mayhem, Super Rugby Pacific will likely be a meandering five-month journey featuring too many mismatches which only gets interesting in the final few weeks.
Even the deeply flawed Super Rugby Trans-Tasman competition maintained interest for the simple fact that every match – and in case of the New Zealand teams, every point - was important in determining which two Kiwi teams made the final.
The All Blacks fell off the metaphorical cliff this year in terms of fatigue but that doesn't excuse the difficulties they had against the Springboks in Australia, and this was after the intensity of Super Rugby Aotearoa. Ian Foster and his assistants will presumably have an even harder time of it over the next two years in terms of changing mindsets and even skillsets for the more ruthless business of test rugby which, and this is stating the obvious, goes to even higher levels for World Cup knockout matches.
I'm pragmatic enough to know that we shouldn't necessarily blame New Zealand Rugby or the All Blacks for allowing our elite players extra rest and to therefore miss Super Rugby games if required.
Their workloads are dangerously high already and that was probably reflected in their two recent defeats. The Crusaders were in contention for both Super Rugby titles this year and so it probably wasn't surprising to see the performances of Mo'unga, Sam Whitelock and Codie Taylor, in particular, fall away. And none of this will change until World Rugby hauls itself into the 21st Century and creates a global season.
But there's no denying it tarnishes the competition and, while obviously made a non-negotiable by Australian Rugby, having the top eight teams of a 12-team tournament qualify for the play-offs merely promotes mediocrity. The competition will suffer for it and so may the All Blacks.
