I know it, you know it. Something weird has happened to Super Rugby.
It is suddenly worth watching again. And it is not just me saying so. The basic stats speak for themselves: five rounds in, see, and the average attendance across the board is up 34 per cent from last year.
On Stan and Nine, in Australia, TV ratings are up 11 per cent. In Fiji, the ratings are up over 40 per cent – and in New Zealand they’re up by double digits, too.
People are actually talking about the games again, and more than a few actually give a bugger. I give a bugger! For yonks, I’d start watching Super Rugby out of an atavistic urge that wouldn’t quit before inevitably switching over to the NRL for faster-moving football with more interesting results. These days, however, I linger longer and more often than not just scan the league briefly before turning back to the real stuff.
Why is it suddenly so good?
First and foremost, it has to be because something even weirder has happened with the results. Australian teams are winning regularly – with even the odd victory over New Zealand teams thrown in for good measure. You’ll recall that not so long ago, Australian teams – singly and collectively – could go whole years without beating the Kiwis. Obviously, the reduction from five Australian teams to just four has meant those four are all commensurately stronger.
NSW’s Darby Lancaster celebrates a try against the Force.Credit: Corbis via Getty Images
Teams like Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika are not only competitive, but are playing a spectacular kind of rugby that takes your breath clean away with its very athleticism. Early days, but both have a feel about them like the West Indies cricket sides of the 1980s and early 1990s – playing with such exuberance and disregard for the conservative norms that they just might redefine the whole thing.
The rules have been changed to improve the game flow, and the referees have been given instructions to “if in doubt, let ’em pout” – don’t stop the game for anything other than serious injury or close-call tries.
I never understood much about the rules at the best of times, but the rule change which means you can’t hammer the halfback coming from a ruck or maul has hugely lifted clearance rates to the backs and further sped the game up. Another great change is to have reduced the time available to take conversions and penalty goal attempts from 90 seconds to 60 seconds.
This speeding up of the game, and reduction of downtime, has meant that by the second half teams are so exhausted huge gaps are opening up in the defensive line, and teams are scoring accordingly.
The net results are there for all to see.
This is, so far, the highest-scoring season on record – with an average of 62. 4 points and about nine tries per match! But it ain’t just one side running up cricket scores while the other side is reduced to endlessly kicking off. The average winning margin is under ten points and nearly half the matches have been decided by four points or less. I am told by the stats boffins that since such things were first recorded in 2012, this season has witnessed the second-highest average running metres per game. 2024 is first. 2023 is third.
You get the drift.
After years of a worse kind of drift, it feels like – slowly, slowly – rugby is turning the corner.
What it would be good to see from here:
- More wins for Australian teams, as we move towards the Lions tour.
- A reduction in bloody box-kicks, which have replaced collapsed scrums as the dullest thing in the game.
- Some way in which the personality of the players becomes better known to the wider public. Having done a little light palling around with some of the players in recent times, I am struck by the huge gap between what little we know of them and what good and interesting men they are.
- A competitive Japanese team to enter the fray to give the competition even more international grandeur.
That’s it. This isn’t a “hold-the-back-page” column. But after such a long and deep hibernation that on a bad day it could be mistaken for rigor mortis, it feels like the Super Rugby beast is stirring, and on its way back.
