Super Rugby: Understanding Super Rugby's All Blacks stand down rules

All Blacks. Photo / Photosport

New Zealand Rugby head of high performance Mike Anthony has cleared up confusion surrounding Super Rugby player restrictions, admitting the organisation could have made things clearer for fans from the start.

Throughout the season, All Blacks have been held out of matches or seen their minutes restricted in line with a player welfare and workload management system agreed on by NZR, the Super Rugby clubs and the New Zealand Rugby Players Association.

Speaking to Radio Sport's D'Arcy Waldegrave, Anthony said the system wasn't something new but had come into the spotlight more this year given it's a World Cup season.

"We've had something in place since 2010…the purpose of the whole thing is player welfare and management. The players are really critical to us and in terms of a desired outcome, we want them performing at the business end of Super Rugby because we want our clubs to do really well," he said.

Since the player management systems have been in place, the All Blacks have won back to back World Cup titles and six of the last seven Super Rugby season have been won by a Kiwi franchise.

This year, All Blacks players were limited to 180 minutes of action through the opening three rounds of Super Rugby and must observe two stand down weeks during the season addition to their team's bye weeks. During the stand down weeks, the player is required to leave the team environment allowing him to switch off and refresh.

Players are also limited in how many matches they're allowed to play in a row. While many thought the number was five in a row, Anthony confirmed players could in fact play six in a row.

"We had initially talked around five but with some feedback from clubs we revised that to six. If a bye falls in the middle of six games, say in round three, then that restarts back to one again. If it's broken by a bye or rest week then it resets and you can go six again.

"You're always learning and it's something that we could have conveyed (better)… I suppose part of it is you don't want to share you're IP with opposition. Everyone's looking at what you're doing – Australia I know are doing an adopted for of what we're doing.

"We probably could have got it out there to people so they could have understood it."
While that reset might help the likes of the Blues, Chiefs and Highlanders, the Hurricanes and Crusaders open the season with eight and nine matches in a row respectively before their first bye, so have to manage their talent a little more.

"The whole thing to this is it's a lot broader than the All Blacks. We've always had protocols and strategies for our younger players for example. Clubs and Mitre 10 Cup teams have to submit development plans and their minutes are capped," Anthony said.

"The other point to this is we're struggling to retain players these days so this, I see, as a key retention tools. Players know and trust they're going to be well managed in this country and well managed between club and country whereas if you go away, there's plenty of money on offer but you're expected to play 30 plus games a year and roll out week after week."