Figured I’d start a thread in honour of the initiative nobody asked for, and seemingly hardly anybody wants. The Super Round!
All of this weekend’s games are held at AAMI park in Melbourne; so yeah, of the 12 teams, 6 of them are missing a home game. But I believe they’re compensated by the Victoria State government so they go along with it.
Last weekend the Melbourne Rebels had 4000 in the crowd for a home derby against the Brumbies. It’ll be interesting to see if they get much of a crowd for any of these games which for the home fans are all bar 1 neutral games.
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First game up on Friday night is Auckland Blues vs Otago Highlanders. Both coming off decent wins last weekend against the Drua and Pasifika respectively. First pictures on the telly are showing a sea of green. But that’s the empty seats, not thousands of fans wearing the Highlanders old away strip.
Zarn Sullivan looks like a player who’s finally realised that at 6’4" he’s a big lad. One big shot in defence against Tavatavanawai, and another decent clean out not long afterwards as well. If he can work on that part of his game he would be a perfect like for like player at 12 for the ABs alongside Jordie Barrett. Heck, they’re both over the ton and Sullivan is only 1 keg lighter than Jordie too.
Rhys Patchell looks made for Southern Hemisphere footy.
Been watching the Moana Pasifika v Fijian Drua game and it’s been a decent match. Some of the TMO intervention has been a bit iffy though. Really don’t think the Ah Wong tackle warranted an upgrade to a red. It was a pretty soft not much arms tackle, but no head contact. And now he’s sin binned Sekope Kepu for making a tackle in an offside position when both of his feet were clearly behind the try line at which point I’m fairly sure its irrelevant where he’s come from that’s as far as the offside line can go.
I think a quite cool initiative, but holding it in round 2 a bit strange. Are there knock outs in super rugby? I did an away day for the pro14 final in Dublin and had a great time, even though Edinburgh weren’t playing. Should this instead have been the final round of regular season?
It’s just not something that makes a lot of sense for Super Rugby given the travel distances (and costs) involved for any travelling fans. So it really relies on local support to fill the stands, and there’s not really any city down here with enough rugby fans that would be able to turn out for 6 games over 3 days. Very different to say having a European club Super Round where every fan is within such easy travel of any major venue for it.
Canberra & Sydney are 70-90 minutes flight away from Melbourne, Brisbane is over 2 hours, and then Perth, Wellington, Auckland & Christchurch are probably around 4 hours off, so its a big commitment. I think the only reason the clubs do it is because the state government covers the loss of profit from holding home games, and if they’re lucky with the draw they might even make more money off it, than say Hurricanes hosting the Force.
Oh, and yep there’s a finals series for the top 8 of 12 teams :)
Actually - you’re probably right on the timing too, if they held it over Easter weekend instead I’m sure it’d be a lot more attractive to travel over the ditch for a long weekend.