Super Rugby set to be a morass of meaningless games to fans

Remember the days when every Super Rugby match mattered? When what happened between the Crusaders and the Blues could have a direct bearing on the fortunes of the Bulls or the Stormers? Well those days are gone.

Super Rugby's expansion to an 18-team tournament in 2016, played in six countries and one city-state, across 16 time zones, over six months with six different logs, has compartmentalised the tournament.

The result of a New Zealand or Australia derby will no longer have any bearing on a South African team's fortunes because an overall combined log no longer exists.

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The "bold new future of Super Rugby" is set to be a morass of meaningless games to fans on either side of the Indian Ocean because of the silos teams will now operate within.

The tournament will now feature 135 matches, up from 125 in 2015. Crucially, many of those games will have little interest and impact outside of their own conferences.

The addition of the Southern Kings from South Africa - and what are effectively two national teams, Argentina's Jaguares and Japan's Sunwolves - has further muddied already-murky waters of the tournament in its previous 15-team format.

Those three new teams have created the eight-team South Africa Group, which includes five existing SA franchises - Bulls, Cheetahs, Lions, Sharks and Stormers - split into two conferences.

So there will be three logs: Africa 1 and Africa 2. Then, their points are tabled collectively in a third log called South Africa Group.

The Bulls, Stormers, Cheetahs and Sunwolves are in Africa 1 conference. The Cheetahs, Kings, Sharks and Jaguares in Africa 2.

The winners of each conference will advance to the quarterfinals, while the third-placed team in the combined South Africa Group log will take the third quarterfinal spot.

Australia and New Zealand will each have their own conferences, also with a combined Australasian Group log. At the end of all of this, five teams from their combined log will advance to the quarterfinals. The final is set for August 6.

From its earliest days in the amateur era, the tournament has always been an unbalanced and inequitable competition because of geographical challenges.

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But in this incarnation it is more confusing and perhaps even unfair. The Stormers and the Bulls, for instance, will not play any New Zealand teams this year (not until the quarterfinals at least). The Sharks and the Lions will not meet an Australian foe.

Given the historic success of New Zealand franchises over SA opponents over the past 20 years, teams in Africa 2 are at an immediate disadvantage.

NZ teams win 60% of the time against SA sides. Australian teams win 54% of matches against SA opponents. So it stands to reason Africa 1 is an easier pool.

But SA are guaranteed at least one team in the quarterfinals, with a possibility of three, which is one aspect the game's administrators have been spinning.

"Our fans will have to embrace a new format, but for us there is one very simple truth: half the South African teams have a very good chance of making the play-offs," Saru CEO Jurie Roux said.

"The format is a win for SA Rugby - less travel away and a shorter tour of Australasia, which will come down to one-and-a-half weeks in some cases, when at one stage it was more than a month long.

"Our teams also didn't want an increase in the number of intense local derbies and instead of facing 10 there are now only seven.

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