A Super Rugby conference system with Australian playoff spots would be pragmatic - and justifiable

Saturday, 30 May 2026

OPINION: How many games did New Zealand teams win against the top two Australian outfits in Super Rugby Pacific this year?

Four out of 10. Only the Hurricanes beat the Brumbies, while the Blues needed extra time to beat the Reds and the Chiefs needed an interesting set of decisions to go their way in Brisbane.

New Zealand teams haven’t denied the Brumbies a home playoff this year, other Australian teams have, while the Crusaders could yet book a home playoff despite a 1-3 winning record against the Aussies (they only beat the Waratahs).

These are the facts worth remembering as debate turns to the Super Rugby format should NZ Rugby knock back the rescue bids for Moana Pasifika, creating a 10-team competition.

Read more:

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• Scott Robertson’s All Blacks coaching team have bounced back quickly - but he’ll also get his chance

• Chiefs re-sign Jared Proffit for two more years, but who really is this walking contradiction?

• Scott Barrett ruled out of South Africa tour in new injury blow for the All Blacks

The cleanest format with 10 teams would be a home-and-away round robin followed by semifinals and finals, but that would four more games to the regular season.

Can they be squeezed into the current competition window? Not without difficulty, and probably not without an earlier start date for a competition that already begins in cricket season.

Nor does that format add more games that are high value for the broadcasters on both sides of the Tasman - the local derbies.

In fact, Australian broadcasters Stan would be far better served by a conference system that allocates semifinal berths to the top two Australian teams.

At present, it looks like the first week of playoffs will be played entirely in New Zealand.

That’s an awful result for Australian rugby, and like it or not NZ Rugby and Rugby Australia are joined at the hip - commercially and in high performance.

In fact, any upside for Super Rugby Pacific is going to come from Australia, not New Zealand.

Conversely, if the Australian Super Rugby model falls - and the court case between RA and the Melbourne Rebels this week showed the perilous state of most Australian Super Rugby sides - then New Zealand will go down with it.

Guaranteed playoff spots for Australian sides will provoke strong reactions in New Zealand, but is anyone really still labouring under the misconception that Super Rugby is an equitable competition as it is?

If NZ Rugby were transparent and showed the amount of money going to the five New Zealand teams - including the lucrative NZ Rugby retainers - it would quickly become apparent that the real-world player budgets of teams such the Crusaders and Chiefs is far higher than the Highlanders.

It’s only a guess, but the player spend in Christchurch or Hamilton is probably two or three times greater than it is in Dunedin.

Inequality is baked into Super Rugby Pacific - an actual salary cap at NPC level has created far more jeopardy in that competition - so the top teams keep finishing at the top and the bottom teams keep finishing at the bottom.

A conference system with Australian playoffs berths isn’t going to make the competition is more unequal than it already is, but it might just give Australian rugby a much-needed lifeline.