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By Mark Keohane, Opinion 
11h ago
CAPE TOWN – Forget the naysayers. South Africa heading north with the top four franchises is a boon for our rugby.
Fewer travel, minimal time zone differentiation, and entering the lucrative Northern Hemisphere market is what all South African players have wanted in the last decade.
Super Rugby, when it was Super 12, was a brilliant competition. In recent years, it was a burden on South African rugby and the players. The best of South Africa were hidden in nowhere. They would get the extra two weeks away from home and ultimately take a beating abroad. If there was no semi-final or final at home, why bother?
New Zealand, despite its limited appeal to broadcasting, has always had a mystique for South Africans, all the more so because of rugby’s international sporting isolation.
The All Blacks are revered in this country as much as the Springboks. I have sometimes wondered if there is more worship in South Africa for the All Blacks than in New Zealand.
South Africa, since its international readmission in 1992, has put all things New Zealand rugby on a pedestal and this is finally over.
New Zealand rugby, through a bullish CEO, made it public two months ago that it was New Zealand first and the rest of the world second.
New Zealand, then, was the only rugby nation whose teams played in front of an audience. New Zealand would either go it alone or explore a trans-Tasmanian competition with Australia. South Africa, before its leaders were informed, was out of Super Rugby.
SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux and Chairman Mark Alexander were calm in their response. They said it was news to them that South Africa would no longer participate in the 2021 version of Super Rugby.
Roux said he appreciated that all nations had to find a solution during Covid-19, but reiterated that he was surprised that the New Zealand Rugby Union went public with such an emphatic statement of intent.
Australia’s rugby chiefs said something similar.
Now New Zealand has what it wanted: a Super Rugby competition without South Africa and possibly without Australia.
Sanzaar’s relationship is such that the Rugby Championship will continue with the Springboks, but Super Rugby, as we have known it since 1996, is over.
And it’s been a long time.
The major South African rugby franchises are best served by playing in the Northern Hemisphere.
Everything in the Northern Hemisphere speaks to the good of South African rugby, from the well-being of the players to the quality of the competition.
I do not subscribe to the theory that the best players in South Africa have to play in a skewed Super Rugby competition to maintain the standards that the Springboks won at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
The All Blacks, for the last decade, have dominated international rugby. Ireland, England and Wales have consistently been in the top four. The Springboks and Wallabies have raided between three and seven.
It took the Boks to win the World Cup to get to number one.
Those who bemoan the apparent lack of standards in the northern hemisphere have not been following world rugby for the past five years.
The game is particularly strong in the Northern Hemisphere and if the Super Rugby champions played against the club kings of Europe in a neutral venue, there would be no score in the game. It would be so close.
When SA Rugby leadership announced earlier in the week that the Super Rugby quartet of the Stormers, Sharks, Bulls and Lions would be heading north, they finally cut the umbilical cord with New Zealand rugby.
Rugby SA does not need New Zealand Super Rugby to be strong. The South African rugby leadership had to make rugby decisions that would favor South Africa first, and not a Sanzaar alliance.
The Springboks, given the quality of training and talent, will always be competitive in the Rugby Championship.
What the decision to go north at the franchise level does is spark interest in the game on a national level and it will bring variety to the season.
Pro Rugby, with the addition of the South African franchises, will immediately become a different competition. Munster and Ulster will have to field their strongest teams and there will be the added attraction of playing in the largest knockout competition in Europe.
That’s where the money and the prestige are. I don’t see the Springboks easily entering an expanded Six Nations, but I do see South African rugby, at the franchise level, becoming an integral part of the fabric of the game in the north.
Don’t regret the end of Super Rugby. And don’t keep putting New Zealand on the highest pedestal. They are unworthy.
Rather, applaud a new dawn in South African rugby. I can not wait.
@mark_keohane
IOL Sport
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