After years of tinkering, debate and experimentation, Super Rugby has finally got it right; or at least laid the foundations.

The 2011 season sees the introduction of a 15th club, the Melbourne Rebels, which takes each nation’s complement to five competitors.

With Melbourne completing the Super 15, organisers finally had the opportunity to create a more even competition and one that gave the sport the best chance of success both at a domestic and international level.

At today’s launch in Sydney, several changes were revealed:

• The competition has been split in to three divisions of five teams (Australia, New Zealand, South Africa)
• Each club will square off twice against their compatriots and play the remaining matches against opposition from the other nations
• The top ranked team from each division will qualify for the finals, PLUS three teams with the next best records overall

Introducing more ‘derby matches’ to the fixture was a masterstroke. Not only does it reduce international travel load, but it will almost certainly increase crowd figures throughout the competition as fans flock to watch more provincial rivalries.

It also acts as a valuable game development tool, whereby the creation of more local matches provides rugby administrators with traction to further develop the sport.

With the addition of more clubs comes the debate about what to do for the finals/playoff structure. And while I’m unsure what the alternatives were, I think they’ve got it right.

The new playoff structure eradicates the ‘problem’ that we saw in recent years with complete and utter domination by teams from one nation (particularly South Africa and New Zealand). Some will argue that you don’t deserve to play finals if you can’t crack the top four, but it provides little incentive for players to keep turning up, and even less for the fans.

The new system guarantees a finalist from each country, and potentially others if they are good enough. The three ‘wildcard’ spots are a deserved reward for teams that have had a fine year, but were topped by compatriot clubs who did that little bit better.

The other obvious change is the increase of finals from four to six teams. While I’m all for a cutthroat post season, it’s rather harsh to qualify just a little over a quarter of the teams for the finals. Compare this to leagues such as AFL and the NRL where a whopping 50% of clubs make the finals (generating plenty of extra dollars, but often creating boring and under skilled mismatches).

In this instance, Super 15 administrators have got the balance absolutely perfect with 40% of clubs reaching the playoffs. Not only will each nation be represented, but it permits a slightly larger margin for error than it did under a four team finals structure.

In summary: more local games, parity throughout the draw, finalists from each nation.

Bring it on!!

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