End of the Super 12

June 2, 2005

Greets to rugby fans everywhere! It doesn’t get much busier than this. Right now we’re on the eve of one of the most tantalizing events on any rugby calendar, and that’s a British Lions tour to New Zealand.

We’ll get to that shortly, but right now is time for a quick post-mortem on SANZAR’s Super 12 season – indeed, the Super 12 itself.

Last Saturday the tenth Super 12 season concluded the tenth year of professional Rugby Union. Like professional sports leagues everywhere, the success of the league and the drive for increased television revenue means the league is expanding. Next year the tournament will see the addition of two new franchises – one in Western Australia, the other in South Africa – and re-christen itself as the Super 14.

Before we get to any of that, the book had to be closed on the Super 12, and it was only fitting that the last S12 championship would be taken out by the most dominant team in the competitions’ history: the Canterbury Crusaders of New Zealand.

Saturday’s championship saw the Crusaders in their seventh final in the last eight years. Their opponents, the New South Wales Waratahs, were playing in their first final. Experience and nerves played out, with the Crusaders cruising in front of the delirious home fans and running-out 35-25 winners, a score-line that flattered the Waratahs.

After exchanging penalties and trailing 3-6 early, the Crusaders owned the game’s first sixty minutes, scoring four tries (and missing another three) to build an unassailable 35-6 lead into the game’s last quarter.

Possibly inspired by Liverpool’s miraculous fightback against Milan in last week’s Championship League, the Waratahs fought back valiantly, but it was much too late. Their misguided gameplan to kick the ball deep into the Canterbury backfield was abandoned after the players discovered forty minutes late that it wasn’t working. The Waratahs opened up, throwing the ball around and charging hard for three late well-earned tries. But the damage had been done, the last minutes were a formality with Crusaders eager to sip champagne and preserve their energy for the upcoming All Blacks-Lions series.

Injuries are always a worry for these Crusaders, and the players might have felt that up twenty-nine points they deserved to bring the intensity down, play out the clock and head to the showers with trophy and limbs intact.

Captain Richie McCaw and fullback Leon McDonald have a history of concussions, and some of the bone-jarring head clashes in the final were downright scary. Both scrum-halves came away dazed. The Waratahs’ Chris Whitaker had his face smashed by Corey Flynn’s head, and Crusaders’ Justin Marshall was seeing stars after his face got crunched absorbing Phil Waugh’s head. Waratahs’ Al Baxter and Brendan Canning both copped black eyes, and fans were given a fright seeing Crusader Leon McDonald get shoulder-charged by Lote Tuquiri and shortly thereafter taking a high impact shot to the face on his way to scoring a try.

The championship also pulled the curtain down on some great careers. The Crusaders and All Black great Justin Marshall played his last game in red & black, and will ply his trade for Leeds Tykes in England; fellow Crusader and All Black prop Dave Hewitt is contracted to wind his career down playing for Edinburgh Gunners in Scotland. As for the legendary Andrew Mehrtens… who knows, Wasps maybe? Waratah and Wallabies’ lock Justin Harrison moves on to Ulster in Ireland, his fellow ‘Tah and Australian international Nathan Grey has accepted a contract to play for the Kyuden club in Japan, and teammates Brendan Canning, Lachlan MacKay and Cameron Shepherd are all departing for the new Western Storm franchise.

Well done Crusaders, well done Richie McCaw. Take a bow.

Ten seasons, and they win half the championships. No arguments, the Crusaders were THE team of the Super 12. The only comparable teams are the Auckland Blues and the ACT Brumbies. The Blues won three championships and the Brumbies a pair. Those three teams totaled 80% participation in all finals contested (16-of-20).

The cavern between those three franchises and the rest of the competition is so vast, it calls into question the need for a two-team expansion.

The way the Super 12 was set up, New Zealand had five franchises; Australia had three franchises; and South Africa had four franchises. The comparative depth of talent between those nations meant the number of teams in each country was about right, and made for a reasonably balanced table (the dominance of the Big Three notwithstanding).

But professional sports leagues are driven by television. The way the Super 12 stood, the nation with the most teams (New Zealand) is also the nation with the smallest population and lowest TV revenue. So the league – aided & abetted by Newscorp’s Rupert Murdoch and advertisers – wanted more games, and thus teams, in Australia and South Africa. Which meant expansion.

In a tight contest, Western Australia beat out Victoria for the fourth Australian franschise, named the Western Storm and announced ex-All Black coach John Mitchell as their new head coach. The South African franchise as it currently stands is up in the air, the details of which are worthy of a separate column (keep your eyes here as developments progress).

Suffice it to say, South Africa’s record in the Super 12 has not been one to boast about. The addition of another franchise and the dilution of talent to make up the rosters for the five South African teams looks laughable. That tables don’t lie. The score-sheet of champions by nation is a wipe-out for South Africa:

New Zealand 8
Australia 2
South Africa 0

The participants in Super 12 Finals by isn’t much better:

NZ 60%
Aus 30%
SA 10%

Any whiz kid can tell you that the expansion of an additional franchise into South Africa is completely unnecessary. Better that they should have added a franchise to the Pacific Islands (Samoa, Tonga, Fiji). An expansion there would have brought a lot of enthusiasm into the tournament and injected a nice cash infusion into those nations’ national rugby programs. I suspect it would also help sell the sport into new overseas markets.

All that’s for the future, however. And we’ll get to it.

In the meantime, stay tuned and check back often.

The season is moving into high gear, and there are questions that need answering. Will Jonny Wilkinson be fit? How bad is Anton Oliver’s injury? Will Rico Gear make the All Blacks? Can Jonah Lomu play all 80 minutes of his comeback???

Be right back, on top of it asap!