Has too much of a good thing gone bad?
I love rugby. A lot. In fact, it’s my favourite sport. I become one of those people who lose their social life (and friends) during rugby season because my schedule invariably revolves around my team’s playing schedule – the Crusaders during Super Rugby and then the All Blacks (and now Argentina, too) during the Rugby Championships.
Being a South African who loves New Zealand rugby I have almost exclusively been interested in southern hemisphere rugby competitions, but in the last few years – notably since 2007 when the European-based Pumas stole the show at the world cup in France – I have found myself increasingly interested in how the northern hemisphere is getting up to in their competitions. And while I have come to love tournaments like the French Top 14, I have begun asking myself if this new interest in the north was purely based on my love for rugby or if I was maybe slightly disillusioned with how much rugby was being played south of the equator?
Don’t get me wrong – Super Rugby is still very exciting and not much beats the rivalries of the Big 3 in the Rugby Champs – but too much of a good thing does lose its flavour and appeal after a while.
Super Rugby is beginning to look a little stale with the crowd numbers in New Zealand backing this statement up. More teams than ever now, but has that made the competition better? Stronger? More enjoyable?
The Rugby Championship, too, has an extra team which means more matches not to mention the NZRU and ARU try to regularly introduce a money-spinning 3rd Bledisloe Cup fixture somewhere in Asia each season.
Again, though, is this the right way to go? More matches dilute the quality of the rivalry after a while. As a child growing up in South Africa, the match every Bok fan wanted to watch was that against the old enemy – New Zealand. Having a few friends from that part of the world has reassured me that the feeling for them was entirely mutual. While I spent my university days in the awesome Aussie rugby city of Sydney there wasn’t a single rugby fixture that beat out the Bledisloe Cup. Think 1994 and Gregan knocking the ball out of a flying Wilson’s hands to save the Bled is just one of the magical moments that that rivalry has conjured up for us.
Now, though, we play each other so often that these much-awaited fixtures aren’t as alluring anymore. The players play each other so much nowadays that I wonder if it’s difficult for them to get psyched up for yet another super derby or Bledisloe match. Adding Argentina into the Rugby Champs has been great, even if they are yet to find their feet, but surely, the better option would have been to have each team play each other only once instead of home and away seeing that Buenos Aires is now also on the travel schedule?
Yes, there is big money involved, but what about the audience this supposedly caters to? Are you really going to turn up each time for something that is always there? And player welfare is a completely separate topic that would need to be seriously looked at.
Rugby is an exciting and physical sport. It offers something unique and dynamic that nothing else does. And even though it doesn’t have the same global reach as football, it’s attracting more and more fans who are tired of seeing an increasing breed of divas on a football pitch trying to feign injuries to exact an advantage.
The All Blacks, having tried to spread the game to different venues in Asia, are now going after the big fish – the United States – in the hopes of giving rugby a firmer footing in that part of the world.
It’s exciting and adventurous and if anyone can get it right it would be the All Blacks. But until then, our own home competitions need a serious revamp and quickly, too.
It’s steadily losing the thing that makes it so intriguing and special.
Indeed, too much of a good thing isn’t going to stay good.
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