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David Havili collides with Kwagga Smith during the Super Rugby final between the Lions and Crusaders at Ellis Park on August 5, 2017 (Gallo Images).
South Africa’s decision to pull its teams out of Super Rugby and head north to PRO14 ended the competition after 25 years.
Here we look at the journey of a tournament that was the breeding ground for teams from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia that have won five of the last six World Cups.
In 1996, a year after rugby turned pro, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia (Sanzar) launched the inaugural season of Super 12 with much fanfare, packed stadiums and lucrative contracts to keep players out of the clutches of rival codes.
It was a straightforward system, and the first season culminated with the Blues defeating the Sharks in the final.
In 2011, the simple head-to-head format was replaced by a complicated conference system and, while it proved frustrating for die-hard fans, as weaker teams could more easily reach the final stages, it took nine years before it was reach an agreement to finalize. that.
Organizing a multinational tournament stretching from South Africa to New Zealand became unwieldy and problems arose with the decision to expand.
By 2016 Sanzar had become Sanzaar with the failed experiment of including teams from Japan and Argentina in an 18-team competition. The games were spread across 16 time zones in three conferences.
Throughout its 25-year history, Super Rugby bosses turned a deaf ear to public calls to include the style of a Pacific Island team, after Fiji and Western Samoa appeared in Super Six and Super competitions. 10 of the amateur era.
Extra South African and Australian teams were added in 2006 and another Australian franchise joined in 2011, giving each of the three founding countries five teams each.
A push for a predominantly Pacific team to join Super 18 in 2016 was rejected in favor of Japan and Argentina.
With a cumbersome 18 teams across three conferences and some lopsided sidelines, the crowds began to thin.
The South African Lions entered the 2017 playoffs despite not having faced a New Zealand team and when the decisive moment came they lost the final at home to the Crusaders.
In another rethink, two South Africans and one Australian were cut off in 2018, before Japan’s Sunwolves were ousted in 2020. The widely criticized conference system would be phased out by 2021.
But the constant tweaks had done their damage and when the coronavirus pandemic made international play impossible, the founding countries looked for the system that best suited them.
With New Zealand and Australia discussing a trans-Tasman competition, South Africa decided that its future lies in the Northern Hemisphere.
