Super Rugby Pacific’s problems have been debated for several years, with discussions over formats, conferences and playoff scenarios. But it boils down to one thing which is again lacking this season — competitive tension.
The statistics don’t lie in that regard, and they don’t make for prettyreading after 48 games of this season and nine of 15 round-robin weekends.
The average margin of this year’s games sits at 17.5 points. It’s a number that has blown out in the last three rounds — leaping from 16.3 points after round six. Tellingly, the last three weeks, which have only had four games per round, have not had a game decided by fewer than 10 points — the smallest margin in that block was the Reds’ 40-28 win over Moana Pasifika a fortnight ago.
Fans don’t complain if the margins are tight and any team can beat each other on any given day. That’s a real competition.
For all of Manchester City or Liverpool’s dominance in recent years, they are fallible in the Premier League - so, too, the Panthers in the NRL. That competition is the obvious comparison to Super Rugby Pacific, but just one game in the last round of the 13-man code was decided by the TAB overs margin of 13 or more points.
There’s been several low-quality yet close fixtures in the NRL this season — not that boss Peter V’landys would ever admit to that — where the standard of play has been verging on poor and error-riddled, yet the result isn’t certain until the closing minutes. No one lingers on the quality of play — apart from columnists — post-match, but they do remember the close finishes and margins.
Leicester Fainga'anuku of the Crusaders dives over to score a try against the Blues earlier this season. Photo / Getty
A suggestion...
How you fix this is up for debate. Scott Robertson hinted this week that once he takes the All Blacks role — from November 1 — he may present to the NZR board the possibility of selecting players from offshore. The first step, surely, is allowing Australian sides to poach Kiwi players in an open market, while retaining their availability for Super Rugby Pacific. That would at least start to even the ledger.
This round of Super Rugby Pacific shapes as crucial for keeping interest levels in the coming weeks to the playoffs. You could argue a case for either side winning in all this weekend’s matches — a rarity this year.
It’s imperative for the All Blacks and their World Cup hopes that these games are closer. You don’t learn much from blowouts. This round of Super Rugby Pacific has the potential to set the closing stages of the competition alight, in much-needed fashion. It’s vital the rugby lives up to it.
A question...
Isn’t it interesting how quickly the argument for needing overseas experience has disappeared? If you were looking for one, a knock on Scott Robertson’s announced All Blacks coaching group would be the lack of international experience. Jason Ryan is the only one with international experience with a tier-one nation, and his is limited to the past eight months, with Scott Hansen’s experience with Japan also valuable.
Test rugby is a different beast to Super Rugby Pacific (as Warren Gatland found going back the other way), with different intricacies and in some cases rules, and Robertson’s staff may require some learning on the job in the ways of test rugby — especially as the majority of coaches they’ll likely face in the big games in 2024 will be hardened by this year’s World Cup.
