CONFESS: THE SUPER 15 RUGBY IS A SPORTING EMBARRASSMENT

The Americanised franchised ‘McRugby’ competition with the audacity to include the name ‘super’ ended recently recently  – good riddance.

For the second year running the final was the one-sided affair you’d expect under the current format - one team being placed at a severe disadvantage, due to an obscene travel schedule.

One team from the final spent three weeks at home tucked-up in bed, the other team spent three weeks travelling literally around the globe.      

All in all the Super 15 Rugby is a global sporting laughing stock in comparison to any other first-world code you can name.

Yet local fans don’t seem to want to see it for what it is: a competition which has a primary role is to gain TV revenue for the Stalinist bodies that run the sport, a warm-up act for Internationals and a buffer against Rugby League.    

These aren’t the only reasons why Super 15 Rugby is a mickey-mouse affair, needs a complete re-vamp, re-think.   

Here are some more proverbial elephants in the room:

1.) Bonus Points; A franchise can end up in a lower position having one more games to another franchise who just happened to have scored more tries. Two teams can draw a game but one of them ends up with more points courtesy of this stupid bonus points system.

2.) Neutral Refs: Do I even need to argue why these are necessary?

3.) In-complete draw: Here’s a competition that saw this seasons two top franchises never playing each other. What credible competition would set-up a draw where some teams don’t play each other?!

4.) Home Team Advantage at Play-Offs: The sixth best franchise gets a home draw for its semi-final simply because the competition needs a franchise from that country to bump-up TV ratings. No need to include the best teams in the play-offs just a representative spread.

5.) Hideous Travel Schedule: In three weeks The Sharks have had to travel 40,000 miles to compete. That would be torture even for a holiday-maker let alone an athlete.

6.) Making-Up Numbers: A number of these franchises are there on the insistence of their respective Unions not on merit. Franchises can end up bottom or close to it season after season and offer nothing to the competition, yet never get scrapped or relegated.

7.) Cobbled together franchises: Let’s take the two provinces that make up the Highlanders, Otago and Southland, for starters. Those two unions are historic bitter rivals, as are say North Harbour and Auckland. How can they seriously go into battle together for one half of the season and then fight it out in the other half?! At one stage North Habour was with Waikato but now with Auckland. In a hundred years when this competition is buried and long & forgotten – who will remember who ‘The Chiefs’ were? Do you remember who the Central Cheetahs or The Cats were from five years ago?

8.) Night Games: TV ratings count more than having a top spectacle if you happen to support a New Zealand franchise. Regardless of TV figures the final should always be staged to produce the best football.

9.) Meaningless Franchises: If I produced a map of South Africa and asked your average Kiwi fan to place the home towns of The Sharks, Bulls etc on a map – how many would get it right? Bugger all.

10.) Byes: What value is there in a ‘bye’? 
   

Yes folks – time to confess - Super 15 is a joke!