Rugby: Buy-in crucial to Super bid

Tony Brown, who played three seasons for the Sanyo Wild Knights, is confident the new side will be successful. Photo / Getty Images

There exists a catch-22 surrounding the potential success of the Japanese Super Rugby side.

With Sanzar on Friday informing the Japanese Rugby Football Union that they were the preferred candidate to enter an expanded competition in 2016, attention now turns to the viability of the proposed team.

Whether that franchise flourishes will, of course, be down to the players they can attract. What will soon become an even more tangled structure in Japanese rugby means there are no guarantees the top tier of talent in the country will be able to feature for the new team.

Some Top League clubs could be resistant, wanting to assess the feasibility of the franchise before fully committing, given players they pay will essentially be suiting up for another side. Along with the contract issue, success will be a big factor when any eventual decision is made but, to achieve success, the side will need their pick of both Japanese players and foreigners based in Japan.

And therein lies the problem. Prosperity comes down to players who may be made available by reluctant clubs only if the side prospers.

"With the structure of the game over there, they'll need buy-in," said former All Black and Sky rugby analyst Richard Turner. "The structure of the game is all corporate-based, so the franchises will need buy-in from the various companies, and I know that's always been a bit of a hurdle for the national team.

"I'm imagining it would be a similar hurdle for any franchise, so that's the challenge - to make it as successful as they can in the shortest possible time to garner buy-in from everybody."

If a majority of the premium talent in Japan is allowed to get a taste of Super Rugby in two years' time, Turner, who played in Kobe towards the end of his career, has no doubt the new side will be competitive.

"Rugby in Japan is certainly a lot stronger than probably most New Zealand rugby fans are aware," he said. "And over the course of the last 10 years, the strength of the Japanese playing stocks has risen as well.

"We've seen the odd example over here, with the likes of Fumiaki Tanaka picking up contracts. A No 8 out of Japan went over to the UK last year, a guy called Takashi Kikutani, so they've got a smattering of quality players, but their challenge will be having that depth."

Otago coach Tony Brown, who played three seasons for the Sanyo Wild Knights, is another who thinks the new outfit will be successful, though time will be needed for that prospect to become reality.

Like Turner, Brown believes Japanese rugby already boasts in their ranks plenty of players with the requisite ability for Super Rugby, but the level of physicality will be an obstacle for the first season or so.

"There are enough quality players already in Japan, from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the UK, to get a pretty competitive team," Brown said. "And they're getting better every year. It's just going to take time to develop that experience at Super Rugby level."

On the issue of buy-in from both companies and clubs, while Brown wouldn't be surprised to see a split initially emerge, he didn't expect the schism to cause fatal damage.

"I think it'll be 50-50. Half the clubs will be really excited and want to support it and the other half won't want their players playing in it and will be quite difficult. That's generally what happens in Japan.

"But there's enough of a base of support in Japan that I think it'll be successful."

- NZME.