Unravelling Super Rugby Pacific’s future: Key takeaways from the latest round - Tight Five with Elliott Smith

Elliott Smith says rugby needs more thought given to key fixtures. Photo / Photosport

OPINION

Elliott Smith analyses the biggest talking points from Super Rugby Pacific.

An observation...

Whenever Super Rugby Pacific - or its board - gets around to appointing its commissioner, defining what they believe fan-centric to be might be worth a go. No better is that illustrated than the bizarre schedule over Easter weekend.

When you have four days available, confining the slate of fixtures to a usual Friday/Saturday seemed shortsighted. One thing Australian rugby league do well is landmarking fixtures across the season and creating traditions of sorts: Good Friday meetings between the same teams every year, Easter Monday, Anzac Day etc.

Since turfing out the South African sides, Super Rugby in theory should have the ability to do it - why not - using the sides who played last week for example - the Chiefs v Crusaders every Good Friday, Moana Pasifika and the Blues on Easter Monday at Eden Park.

Play them in the afternoon, especially on Good Friday - it’s not like there’s much to do given the restrictive and archaic trading laws. Tradition deepens the engagement in the game, something needed desperately here.

A prediction...

(Partial) credit where it’s due though; this year they’ve gone a step towards creating something on Anzac weekend, with five trans-Tasman fixtures (the Fijian Drua play Moana Pasifika) set down. No games are set down for the day itself though, which seems a case of two steps forward, one step back.

Let’s hope it’s a start.

A suggestion...

Now, this next suggestion might not seem overly fan-centric at first but bear with me; Super Rugby should take next week off.

Or somewhere around here, each season. Halfway through the regular season, everyone gets a bye. Yes, it’s a free hit to the NRL for the weekend. Yes, you risk halting any momentum the competition has in its tracks.

But it would be worth it for the brief pause to the competition to allow the 15 other weeks to be as premium as possible, now the byes are staggered across three weeks. This week has just four games - three of them appear foregone conclusions.

In a league with comparatively few teams to other sporting competitions, you need to keep a wall of content to keep fans engaged, not shorten the buffet of games for three weeks.

There’s technically no need for byes in an even-numbered competition but from a high-performance perspective, coaches and teams value them. So, by scheduling a fallow week next weekend around the middle of the regular season, everyone is in the same boat.

Ideally you could cover this off as an “All Blacks” rest too and keep the integrity of the competition a bit stronger.

A question...

And in the weekend where there’s no Super Rugby? Start the club competitions and first XV competitions around the country. Allow them to shine for the weekend and build some momentum. If we also took this year for an example, it’d also be the Aupiki final weekend, allowing the women’s decider some clear air.

An explanation...

While they appear largely cosmetic changes and seem insignificant to the governance issues plaguing New Zealand Rugby, they’re ones that Super Rugby must look to - among others – to reinvigorate the competition. The one percenters like this do matter.

Elliott Smith is Newstalk ZB and Gold Sport’s lead rugby commentator and reporter. He’s been a sports journalist since 2010 and has travelled to three Rugby World Cups for NZME, including commentating the Rugby World Cup final in 2023.