Genuine rivalry puts the Super into rugby
How do we bottle what the Chiefs and Crusaders have got? PLUS: Aucklanders wake up to 11,509th stadium proposal; the Warriors bag a duck; and a big day for Kiwis in the US.
Chiefs versus Crusaders.
In those three little words you have the awesome potential of southern hemisphere ‘club’ rugby. Stare at them for too long, however, and it’s just as easy to fixate on the limitations.
The Chiefs edged the latest thriller between the two teams, winning 34-24 in front of a capacity crowd in Hamilton.
It never once felt like a 10-point game as the Crusaders looked ready to put the pretenders to their crown through the meat grinder. The six-time defending champions wanted to impose themselves through the scrum and lineout drive, to attack the narrow channels and limit Damian McKenzie (pictured) and Shaun Stevenson’s strike power by diverting their attention to defending and contesting kicks. You couldn’t count the number of games the Crusaders win in this way: by first sapping and then striking.
They would have got away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling Chiefs. They didn’t wilt and when it reached the point of the game when you expected the visitors to wrest control as is custom, it was the Chiefs electric backs that did so instead.
A match report, especially a three-paragraph one written 36 hours after the event, misses the point entirely, however. The game stood for something larger.
These two teams have developed a genuine, compelling rivalry, the sort of rivalry that sells out a stadium, a fact that made Sam Cane genuinely emotional.
“You just don’t take it for granted, because it shows they believe in what we’re doing, and I suppose in a way we’ve earned their trust, and their respect and belief,” he said. “It makes a difference, it’s awesome.”
Super Rugby is fast approaching three decades of existence and yet the ratio between games like the one we watched on Saturday (the Friday nighter between the Hurricanes and the Brumbies was pretty good, too) and the missable and instantly forgettable is still far too heavily weighted towards missable and forgettable.
There has been enough time to establish enduring rivalries but for a myriad of reasons they haven’t stuck.
The constant tinkering with the format, the misguided expansion, the ambiguous geographic ties, the dominance of one team above all others, the weakness of too many teams, the subservience of the NZ clubs to the All Blacks machinery and unsatisfactory stadium experiences have contributed to the malaise.
I spent a man-flu Sunday wracking my brain trying to think how to make Super Rugby more like it looked for that propulsive hour-and-a-half on Saturday night, but I kept coming back to this fundamental consideration: if I was starting Super Rugby in the year 2024, it would look nothing like it does in 2023.
Rather than outline how I think the premier below-test-level rugby competition in this part of the world could or should look, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to open it up to you. For argument’s sake, we’ll keep the name Super Rugby, but the rest is a blank canvas, from ownership models to format to kickoff times. Anything.
What would Super Rugby look like if you could create the competition from 2024 onwards?
Feel free to hit the button here…
… but I know most of you are more comfortable emailing privately, so that’s okay too.
I’ll compile the best of the feedback for the Friday newsletter (and if there’s none, I’ll just have to subject you to my model).
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Just a couple of months ago the idea of Damian McKenzie guiding the All Blacks around France in the No10 jersey would have seemed fanciful. It doesn’t seem so far-fetched now.
He is the perfect example of how development is not always linear.
McKenzie looked like the sort of player who would never quite fulfil the awesome potential everybody had seen in him when he made the All Blacks as a 21 year old. The will-o’-the-wisp running was there, but it didn’t always translate to the international stage. Too often it was sideways and occasionally even directionless, serving only to squeeze his outsides. Never the most robust defender, even after 40 test caps, his game just seemed a little too flaky for the biggest stage.
When he signed for the Tokyo Sungoliath in 2022, with the intention of returning in time for the World Cup, it felt like McKenzie was taking a high-risk gamble on his future. Fast forward and he’s just inked a two-year deal with New Zealand Rugby (so has Ruby Tui).
It might have been the best decision he’s ever made. He has returned refreshed and, in every respect, a better player. Having just turned 28, McKenzie doesn’t just look to exploit space himself, but makes those around him better too.
Ironically, his improvement curve since leaving the All Blacks environment has been steep.
The way he owned that final quarter - or more accurately, the way the threat of his running owned that final quarter - was masterful.
Granted, there is a big difference between steering the Chiefs around the paddock in the round-robin phase of a mid-strength tournament to the knockout phases of a World Cup, but all you can do is thrust your name into the conversation.
While there might be a few diehards in Canterbury and Pungarehu who might beg to differ, there is little question McKenzie has been the most consistent and classy of the No10s this season.
It has been a big few days for Auckland stadium news, with the Eden Park Trust announcing plans for a mega-revamp, less than two decades removed from an expensive not-very-mega-revamp.
A retractable roof, three new grandstands and a pedestrian promenade are features of a multimillion-dollar proposal to upgrade Eden Park, unveiled by stadium bosses.
The “Eden Park 2.0” vision would transform the stadium into a 60,000-capacity sport and entertainment fortress, allowing for a multi-purpose facility that attracts some of the world’s biggest sporting events and stadium concerts.
A price tag was a notable omission, unless you call the deliberately vague “multimillion-dollar” designation a price tag (I will tell you something gratis, it will cost a lot more than the $2m that is at the lowest end of that particular sliding scale).
If nothing else, it was nice seeing my name on the front page of the Weekend Herald!
The new-look Eden Park would replace what former Herald sportswriter Dylan Cleaver once described as a “mismatched bag of bones” – the existing patchwork design in which no two of the four grandstands are the same.
The Herald’s lead opinionista Simon Wilson likes the general idea ($), but is seriously underwhelmed by the preliminary drawings.
The design for the stadium has to be magnificent. Surprisingly, the artist’s renders are merely utilitarian. Nope. Do way better, please.
Agreed.
Those of us from Ramarama to Hatfields Beach had barely had time to digest that news when the Herald also dropped this, surprising those of us who thought the whole waterfront idea had been sunk to the bottom of the Hauraki Gulf. Turns out it sits even lower than that - with its base 18m below the seabed - but is still very much alive and although comes with an actual price tag ($1.8 billion), the Auckland Waterfront Consortium says it will not cost tax- or ratepayers a cent.
The Herald understands the [reworked] waterfront stadium proposal will be released within the next two weeks - and will once more pitch the city in a battle between the history of the ageing Eden Park with the concept of an all-new waterfront development.
The Bounce’s stadium expert Brian Finn has read it all and man does he have some thoughts.
He will be back on these pages soon, but in the meantime read this, this and this to get a primer.
This line from the last piece in his stadium trilogy seems particularly pertinent.
Where Aotearoa stadium projects have succeeded, they have benefited from that rare thing in our civic and political realms – vision and leadership. Dame Fran Wilde was instrumental in getting the Wellington Stadium built against significant opposition. Malcolm Farry in Dunedin drove headlong at getting a new, covered stadium funded, built and opened in time for RWC 2011. You could argue that Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Sports Minister Trevor Mallard nearly pulled something amazing off with the proposed Stadium New Zealand on Auckland’s waterfront in time for the 2011 tournament - but the word “nearly” is doing all the heavy lifting there.
I’m never going to sit down and watch seniors golf, just like I’d never watch seniors tennis, masters cricket or golden oldies rugby.
But there is something that is so damned wholesome about the Steven Alker story that makes you want to ride the journey with him.
Alker won the Insperity Invitational for the second year running, closing with a six-under 66 for a four-shot victory over Steve Stricker and his first title of the year. That’s really not the story though.
From the Associated Press report:
His good friend and former caddie Sam Workman was from the Houston area. Workman last caddied in January in Hawaii before being diagnosed with cancer. He died about a month later.
At the tournament this week, many of Workman’s friends and family made their way to The Woodlands Country Club just outside of Houston to support Alker, dressed in Houston Astros jerseys (Workman’s favourite baseball team).
Alker also wore ribbons with the Astros logo on his cap this week in honour of Workman.
Alker, who had his son Ben caddying for him for the first time this week, said it was an emotional victory.
“You can see the emotion on 18. I just saw a sea of orange today. It just reminded me of Sam,” Alker said.
It was a big morning for New Zealanders in the States, with Scott McLaughlin putting a string of bad luck behind him to win the Grand Prix of Alabama with a dominant performance.
McLaughlin is now fourth in an extremely contracted standings, his 119 IndyCar points just 11 behind series leader Marcus Ericsson as the drivers look forward to a month in Indiana, with the GMR GP - which uses some of the Indianapolis oval and infield - followed by the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 at the end of the month.
Tell you what didn’t improve my man-flu mood - the Warriors.
I don’t need to hear any of the “last year it would have been 0-30” either. The conditions were godawful, but so was the product.
One quote from Andrew Webster summed up the match perfectly.
“I thought we were a little clunky, we could have been better… I don’t think the Roosters threw anything great at us either.”
Even my Warrior diehards feel flat. Wrote Peter:
Sure we were missing some important players, namely Tohu Harris and Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad but we definitely had our chances and the ball to create them.
The Chooks played the right game for the conditions and gang-tackled for the whole 80 minutes, which eventually won them the game. They were fairly ordinary otherwise and Joey Manu was noticeably quiet but their forwards did the hard yakka.
We missed Harris for his ability to put someone into a gap (we only needed one) and Shaun Johnson couldn’t do it either. His short kicking game was off.
Couldn’t criticise the effort but we’re lacking power props and a ball-playing lock (think Isaah Yeo or Cameron Murray).
We either do something special quickly or take the Night Bus to who knows.
THIS WEEK
We’ll take a closer look at the cricket in a midweek newsletter for $ subscribers, including the strange anomaly that sees Daryl Mitchell having scored international centuries in eight separate matches, five of which New Zealand has lost. There’ll also be a review with a bit of a difference.
Apologies also to those who tried to comment on Friday’s newsletter. In the past I have disabled them if I knew I was not going to be in a position to respond in a timely manner, but on this occasion it was inadvertent.
This one is not fully competition focused but I've always found it curious that there is no official Super Rugby App. A good app with real time highlights and midweek content would surely boost fan interest. The ESPN app does a great job of this for fans following over seas competitions.
Hi Dylan - more afternoon games required! Super Rugby teams would most likely get thousands more kids turning up to games if they were at 2:30pm and not 7:30pm. Also the stadiums need to make the experience more enjoyable. Finally banning or at least discouraging the rolling maul would also help Super Rugby (not to mention the wider game) no end.