Rugby: Take one for the team

Rugged, reliable players such as Chris Lowrey are the new stars of Super Rugby. Photo / Getty Images

Super 15 is changing the face of our premier rugby competition and Gregor Paul reports that it is no longer about the best team nor the most creative players - resilience and depth are required more than ever to win the title.

Once a sprint, Super Rugby is now a slog, and the attrition, grind and relentless physicality is likely to push an ever greater number of New Zealanders towards Europe and Japan.

The extended conference format is clearly not to everyone's liking and with colossal money, shorter seasons and high-tempo rugby on offer in Japan, it is expected that plenty more players will follow Jerome Kaino there.

They will be pushed as much as pulled - looking for something Super Rugby once had but lost when the season jumped to 18 games and almost six months.

Others will head to Europe believing that if they are going to be bashed to a pulp, why not do it for double the money and a different lifestyle.

Super Rugby as it stands suits broadcasters and sponsors - as more content means better value for money.

But a growing number of players aren't so keen on the new landscape.

When Super Rugby began, Super 12 had an immediate intensity.

With just 11 round-robin games and only four teams making it through, squads were smaller (26), starting XVs were more settled and any more than three defeats proved just about terminal to a campaign.

The February to late May window also meant the competition was mainly played on fast tracks with a dry ball.

The introduction of Super 14 changed little - it brought two extra games and two extra squad members but the competition remained a high intensity sprint played in the best weather.

Super 15 has changed everything, to the extent that the Blues, having fallen to their worst start in history, can still make the play-offs.

Their four defeats are damaging, not campaign-ending, as Blues midfielder Benson Stanley pointed out after the loss to the Hurricanes.

"It's a long season ..." was his view about the Blues' lowly position on the table. "I think we will see squad rotation become a bigger part as injuries will tell."

The Blues could find reasons for optimism; the Reds have been hammered by injury and may struggle for a few weeks yet; the Chiefs have coped so far after losing several key members but could yet feel the toll in later rounds, while the Hurricanes will do well to continue digging out results if their scrum is buckled as it was at Eden Park. Whatever the final wash-up - the emphasis has changed; Super Rugby is no longer about finding the best team. It is about finding the most resilient.

Just six rounds in and virtually every contracted player in New Zealand has featured, including a handful of wider training group members.

It is no longer about the top XV; it is about which coach can make best use of his squad, realise when individuals are hitting the wall and rotate the selections.

It is a more complex competition for the coaches and likely to throw up unexpected plot lines where seemingly disastrous campaigns miraculously come good and early front runners collapse in a heap.

There is the unknown effect of the three-week break for the June tests to be factored in and the inevitability of winter changing the style and tempo of the critical games.

Unquestionably, the competition as it stands now benefits younger, peripheral players who in the days of Super 12 may have started only once a season. Now everyone in a 30-man squad expects a handful of starts and plenty of action off the bench.

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Super Rugby has lost its point of difference. It is evolving into a Southern Hemisphere version of the English Premiership and French Top 14 and that will have serious effects in the next few years.

For older, more experienced players, the pulling power of Super Rugby is weakening. Why get battered for $150,000 a season when the likes of Stanley and Jimmy Cowan could earn $300,000 to $500,000 being beaten up in France and England respectively?

Stanley is understood to be close to signing with Clermont and Cowan with Gloucester. It's nothing new for players to feel the time is right to move on. The big question now is whether New Zealand is about to start losing players they once might have kept; players drawn to Super Rugby for its emphasis on skill, creativity and finishing.

Kaino may have turned down the $1.3 million a season he has been offered by Toyota if he was truly enamoured with Super Rugby.

His body is already feeling the pinch - how much did he fancy the endless hard yards that lay ahead had he stayed?

There are 14 All Black tests scheduled this year as well. Kaino, had he not been injured, would have played close to 30 games.

More than half would have been bone crunchers - tests against the Wallabies, Pumas, English and Springboks, while the inter-conference clashes, of which there are eight, are viewed as virtual All Black trials. The NRL is seen as extreme at 26 relentless weeks.

Since the expansion to 15 teams and the conference format, the number of players heading to Japan has exploded.

Last year saw Brad Thorn, Mils Muliaina, Ma'a Nonu (sabbatical), Stephen Brett, Mike Delany, Dwayne Sweeney, Isaac Ross, Chris Jack, Alando Soakai and Rodney So'oialo all head there.

The Japanese are determined to successfully host the 2019 World Cup and see building their domestic league as part of the package.

Playing alongside big name foreigners will help Japanese players develop - that's the theory and that's why the contracts are major. It's not just the money, though, that is attractive.

The Japanese league is short and sharp - the rugby is high-tempo and aerobic, much like Super 12 back in the day.

The other intriguing shift in Super Rugby becoming more apparent is the rise of the journeyman hero.

Throughout Super 12, the stars were the likes of Carlos Spencer, Stephen Larkham, Rico Gear, Doug Howlett and Joe Roff - creators, finishers, men with inordinate skill and X-factor.

Demand for these types of players is still high but the coaching fraternity feel more content when they land a work horse - a reliable, rugged unit they know will empty the tank and front up each week.

The new stars are the likes of Jarrad Hoeata, Craig Clarke, Matt Todd, Chris Lowrey, Shaun Treeby and Jack Lam.

Fill a side with these types of players and a championship becomes possible.

Chiefs coach Dave Rennie indicated the shift in thinking after his side defeated the Crusaders.

The key wasn't the midfield contribution from the All Black combination of Aaron Cruden, Sonny Bill Williams and Richard Kahui - it was the grunt offered by a pack of no names.

"We put a lot of time into selection to make sure we picked forwards with a good work ethic, guys we felt would give plenty and work for each other," explained Rennie.