Figured i’d share my thoughts on how the season shook out and what’s coming up in the playoffs. Indulge me!
The losers:
12 - Waratahs: Even more injuries than the Crusaders, they’ve sucked for a few years now and just didn’t have the cattle to compete. Maybe next year if they can pick up some decent players from the Rebels.
11 - Moana Pasifika: Some people rate this year as a bit of a turnaround with a better coaching setup. I’m not sure I see it. They beat the Drua, Reds, Force & Waratahs at “home” but were pretty woeful on the road, including a big game playing in Tonga. They desperately need a real home base (or at least a couple of bases they visit regularly outside of Auckland) and I suspect if SR can’t find a 12th team for 2026 they might get dropped for a 10 team comp.
10 - Force: Of the losers, the Force actually looked pretty good at times. It feels a bit weird due to the allegations which he was acquitted of, but when Kurtley Beale started playing for them, the combo with Donaldson at 10 looked really good. Still they only managed 4 wins - even if they looked hard to beat at home.
9 - Crusaders: an awful season which the last few rounds showed was more to do with personnel being unavailable than anything else. Take Whitelock, Mounga and Jordan out of a team and they’ll lose some stars, but then ask them to do without Taylor, Barrett, Blackadder, Burke and Havili as well and decimate their coaching staff for Razor’s benefit. It shouldn’t have been a surprise they struggled to win, let alone dominate. On the bright side, their loss was Super Rugby’s gain - I think the interest in the comp comes from the unpredictability and SR should strive to ensure no team can dominate like that again, for the benefit of the comp itself.
The Playoffs:
SR has been a season where the top 3 have been awesome - all with 12 wins, then there’s been a logjam in the middle until the strugglers who’ve all had 4 wins except the 'tahs on 2. That makes most of the quarters a little uncompetitive, but still…
Chiefs - Reds: There’s a lot to like from the Reds this year, but they’ve been really inconsistent and away from home its hard to see them tipping over the Chiefs who’ve looked good whenever they’re not playing the Hurricanes & Blues. Actually to be fair, they’ve looked ok against them too, but those two are on another level. Hurricanes - Rebels: The Rebels form over the last half of the season was awful, I see them getting stomped here. Hurricanes have been too good on attack this seasons. Blues - Drua: Everybody knows the Drua are incredible at home, but away they kinda suck. The Blues play a very direct & physical game, they should have even more players coming back for the playoffs and should have a dominant win. Brumbies - Highlanders: For a while there it was a chance that the Brumbies could take 2nd, or maybe even 1st place. They are near unbeatable at home. The Highlanders have had huge injury disruptions and have been solid enough but are unlikely to get past this round.
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So many playoffs this weekend, a feast for fans! Think I should be able to watch the Brumbies v Highlanders match. And being a highlander I know who I’ll be supporting!
I should do a write up of the URC too, as they are all tasty matches this weekend.
And on the domestic note, the Super6, the semi-pro league in Scotland, wraps up forever this weekend, so fairwell to that idea. Scotland is reverting back to clubs decide how things go, with regional championships replacing. So Caley Reds Borders and South, Glasgow, and Edinburgh all to see returns to a championship of some description.
Isn’t it mad that the URC and Super Rugby basically finish at the same time?! Even Japan League 1 only finished a couple weeks ago, and the USA’s MLR is closing in on the end of season too! Given its June I guess that means the URC starts quite late, as well as Super Rugby starting quite early. The main impetus for the early start is to be done in time for the winter test window and then leave time afterwards for the NPC. How long that remains the status quo will be interesting.
The club game in the NH has very little downtime. I’m surprised the players aren’t revolting already tbh. And the global calender has long been touted, but never really been accomplished. There’s been talk of club world cups and all sorts over the years though
In NZ there’s not much downtime either, but its in a different form - there’s a few different paths.
The top NZ pros will be in Super Rugby camps from the New Year and the season runs through to basically the end of June.
Then there is a split where the best will be on All Blacks duty through the July test window, most will then have a break before heading up north in November for the End of Year / Autumn Internationals. They’ll get back to NZ around the start of December and have a few weeks off before starting again.
The SR players that aren’t All Blacks will gradually filter into their NPC teams depending on how far into the finals they played. Annoyingly, even though the All Blacks aren’t in it, the NPC doesn’t actually start until August and runs all the way until the end of October. Those players will get most of November off, but will start assembling for SR training camps again in December.
So that covers the bulk of the best kiwi players, but there’s still more Rugby to account for.
Some NPC players will play in Japan instead of SR, and plenty of others will be over in the USA playing MLR. So for those players, while they might get more weeks off in between seasons they then have to pack up & move away from home for half the year too.
Those NPC players that don’t pick up a contract in Japan or MLR are most likely just semi-pro; so will go back to being plumbers, farmers or builders for the rest of the year.
But NZR is possibly missing a trick here with the fortunate timing on both JL1 & MLR that could help with the NPC affordability/competitiveness ratio. I don’t know exactly how well it could work but encouraging a full working relationship between a given NPC team and both a Japanese & USA based pro teams where the young players likely to make it as full time pros or the guys who are right on the cusp but can’t quite make SR still get to play as full time pros just sounds sensible to me.
There’s already a lot of players going over there, but that’s on their own initiative and very adhoc - probably because those other nations would rather deal with players than NZR (I don’t blame them). But I could see it being beneficial for both sides of the exchange, NZR gets pros in the NPC without having to cover the whole year of salary, Japan or in particular MLR get seasoned pros to help build up the strength of their competition and instill that work ethic into their own players.