Super XV Conference system, worth the trouble?

For the diehard Super Rugby fanatic the Super XV has kicked off and are now well under way with the first number of rounds completed. For a diehard rugby fanatic from South Africa it is however not that enthralling or even as inviting as it has been during the years of the Super 14, 12 etc.

I don’t like this new look Conference system at all, it seems to me that each respective country’s franchises are fighting it out to be the top dog in their country, interrupted with the odd visiting team from abroad.

The first issue I have a problem with it is the fact that you do not play all the teams. Now this to me is unheard of, how do you create a system with a round robin where teams don’t play the same opposition? It simply just doesn’t make any sense at all.

My second issue is the fact that the tournament is now so long, lasting an almighty 24 weeks in total. In fact it is so long now that it has to be interrupted after week 15 just to accommodate the June internationals and then recommence at the end of June. It then runs until the first week in August.

My third issue is the fact that the Currie Cup, South Africa’s premier domestic competition has now been reduced to six teams, purely because there just isn’t enough time in the calendar to have 8 teams competing. When you consider that 5 of these teams are already playing a double round in the Super XV, they will repeat the same process and just add one more team. Where is the common sense in that?

My fourth issue and perhaps the most significant one is the Conference system. When you scrutinise it in-depth, all it really does is guarantee every participating country a qualifier for the knock out rounds because the leading Franchise in each Conference gets a spot.

This is however not the end of the farce, as the top two log leaders of these three qualifying franchises are guaranteed a semi-final spot, whilst the remaining leading franchise of the other Conference has to play a qualifying match against one of the next three qualifiers of the log.

The reasons why this conference system in itself is farcical is that if one country has a much stronger conference than the other two nations, it stands to reason that the log leader of that conference might not be in the top two nations of the log, hence they will not only have a tougher route by having to play a double round of matches in their tougher conference, but then will also have to play an additional qualifying match because of it.

To further add insult to injury, a conference with less competitive strength will provide the leading franchise of that conference with an almost insurmountable advantage as they will have a situation whereby they can rack up a log points against 2 or even 3 poor teams in a home and away fixtures that teams in other conferences may not even play once. This could be an advantage of anything up to 20 log points.

That is absolutely ludicrous when comparing the Super XV to previous models of the Super 14, 12 and even Super 10 whereby every team played every other team on an alternating home and away basis bi-anually.

Now you may argue that I am being extremely critical about the new Conference system, and perhaps that may be true, but this system reeks of manipulating results in a manner where the maximum TV audiences in each of these respective countries can be enticed to remain glued to the television set for the duration of the tournament and not only up to the point where their country’s representative teams have been eliminated.

In the history of the Super Rugby Tournament on 6 occasions not all three countries were represented in the semi-finals, Australia 1998, 2007, 2009, New Zealand 2001 and South Africa 2002, 2003, did not make the semi-finals, but is that not the nature of the beast?

In my view teams should compete on equal footing for the honour of earning a well deserved semi-final spot. When teams are virtually guaranteed to make the semi-finals because of a new look system that is neither logical nor fair, the importance of the achievement is degraded and frankly meaningless.

It is my hope that when the next installment of broadcasting rights are discussed around the table by SANZAR, that they will take a long hard look at the compromises that have been taken when the conference system was put into place.

Some good thoughts there Biltong.

For me, I do like the extra "derby" matches, even though they do tend to skew the competition. With the NZ Super franchises being a lot more separated from the NPC provinces than is the case in South Africa the INL cup has retained its own identity. Even though the ABs hardly ever get to play in it any more

I would love to see all the teams playing each other though, especially if the comp can be cut back to 12 teams again.

Well I can't see why they can't just play each other now.

You have 14 weeks for the round robin, one ezrta week as a bye, and two weeks for the semi final and final.

Competition wrapped up in 17 weeks.

You look at the tours coming in June, you could either play the semi0-finals and final after that, or start the comp two weeks earlier.

This way it leaves July, August, September and October for an 8 team Curry Cup and the finals before the Autmun tours come up.

Plus the Super Xv will then regain it's credibility in my view.

Everyone knows the problem is $ and Aus and SA adding the extra teams.
Derbys have bigger audiences.
Aus doesn't have a proper domesitc competition and not many top players and only a reasonable audience
NZ has a lot of top players but not the audience so not enough $
SA has many top players but not enough to support so many teams but has the massive audience and so $.

I think the current system is awful and we should go to a Super 11. With 4,4,3 teams. But that won't happen. More than likely in 2015 SA will add another team and the competition will be a little weaker and longer. But we will still watch because we are stupid or just hooked.

biltongbek wrote:
The first issue I have a problem with it is the fact that you do not play all the teams. Now this to me is unheard of, how do you create a system with a round robin where teams don’t play the same opposition? It simply just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Isn't it the same in the NFL? I thought the new system was a great idea when I heard about it. However I don't watcch Super Rugby and never have so I don't know how it's gone down in the three nations.

The Heineken Cup has been unbalanced for years. And you never play all the teams. If anything it makes it more unpredictable and exciting. And at the end of the day I can't think of a year where the winner wasn't fully worthy of the title. The cream rises to the top no matter what the tournament setup.

Don't you like more derbies? I would. But I heard that in Australia and South Africa they've been quite conservative and boring.

The good thing about it though is that it limits the amount of ridiculous travelling and touring the teams had to do under the previous model, especially South African sides.

gowales, it actually doesn't really mate.

In the super 14, SA teams had to travel overseas to play 5 antipodean matches one year and the alternative year they would travel to play 4 antipodean teams.

Now it is still 4 per year.

So the travelling has really not reduce much at all.

I agree mate. I hate the conference system. It takes the gloss off the Currie Cup and ITM games. Amazingly, an Australian was complaining that NZ had the weakest conference and so was an advantage to NZ sides. When you look at the Australian conference and the form of those sides you have to wonder whether he was being serious.

To me the games I look forward to are not the derbies but pitting your national regional sides against the top SA and Aus sides. The derbies are all too familiar and therefore seem repetitive. Maybe that´s not the case in Australia because they don't have a competition outside the Super toury. Which lends me to suggest that John O'Neill has done a very good job of making the Super tourny the way it is.

kiakahaaotearoa wrote:To me the games I look forward to are not the derbies but pitting your national regional sides against the top SA and Aus sides. The derbies are all too familiar and therefore seem repetitive. Maybe that´s not the case in Australia because they don't have a competition outside the Super toury. Which lends me to suggest that John O'Neill has done a very good job of making the Super tourny the way it is.

I cannot agree with you more, the Currie Cup and the ITM cup is supposed to be the local derbies. The Super XV is supposed pitted against another country. And yes, O'Neill, Murdoch, in fact the whole lot doesn't impress me one bit.

The present conference system also removes two games against those foreign regions that you don't get to meet. They could be easybeats that your side is missing out on points or they could be good sides that you miss out on because you want to see your team go up against the best. Either way, the conference system takes away from that.

A way to get round this is that the tournament starts with a conference system and the top two teams go into a competition where you play the other two top two teams home and away and based on that you get your finalists. That would keep the crowd numbers up for the foreign games because the games mean something. Only SA pulls their weight when it comes to the crowd. The conference system is a way of drawing in the crowds but it offers up other problems.

The problem with the derbys drawing in crowds is that the crowds are coming from somewhere not necessarily nowhere. Is it leading to a total increase in the number of people watching rugby (at all levels) or is it pulling players from ITM and Curry Cup or even club rugby or even other Super Games.

If you don't have a season ticket and you have to choose between buying a extra Hurricanes ticket for the year or seeing 2 Wellington games well one game is going to miss out.