TALKING POINT: SA's switch to URC has weakened the All Blacks

They were different teams, it was a different venue and a different game in a different country, but what happened in the two games that took place either side of the Tasman Sea at the start of the Castle Lager Rugby Championship were related.

Since South Africa’s departure from Super Rugby, the rugby world, and the world order, has changed markedly. New Zealand have slipped, not quite to the extent of Australia, but to a point where their home fortresses are no longer impregnable like they were.

You’d expect the All Blacks to atone for defeat to Argentina in Wellington with a win on Saturday at an Eden Park venue where they haven’t lost since the “try from the end of the world” that clinched France victory in 1994. But these days you can’t be as sure as before. The Kiwi aura of invincibility has gone.

Arguably it started with the comprehensive defeat the All Blacks suffered at the hands of Eddie Jones’ England in the 2019 Rugby World Cup semifinal, but it may not be a coincidence that the downward trend has happened just when the impact of no longer having South Africans as regular opponents at regional level would have started to be felt.

In 2015 the joke after that World Cup hosted in England was that the RWC should be renamed the Rugby Champions. Because the finishing order was 1. New Zealand, 2. Australia, 3. South Africa and 4. Argentina.


CHASM BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH COMPETITIONS

With the exception of between around mid-2000 to the end of 2003, when Clive Woodward’s England ruled the world, the first three teams in that 2015 World Cup were pretty much the standard inhabitants of the top three in the World Rugby Rankings for the best part of two decades or more.

It was usually New Zealand top, with the other two trading places periodically, and the Rugby Championship, which was preceded before 2012 by the Tri-Nations, was effectively a mini annual world championship. The All Blacks, even when they didn’t lift the Webb Ellis trophy, were rightly regarded as the between years champions because they dominated the Tri-Nations and then the Championship.

But not anymore. While South Africa are at No 1, and look likely to stay there for the foreseeable future, and the All Blacks did play in last years RWC final, the host nations started last week games with New Zealand enjoying a tenuous hold of third place ahead of fourth ranked France, but Australia had dropped to ninth, not that far ahead of 10th placed Fiji.

Fiji of course are the main other nation represented in what has become Super Rugby Pacific, so that competition is played between teams from the third, ninth and 10 ranked nations. When South African teams play in the Vodacom United Rugby Championship, they are in a competition that includes the top two nations, the other being Ireland, plus the seventh ranked Scotland and eighth ranked Italy, both of whom are now ahead of Australia.

And when they switch over to the elite Investec Champions Cup, the local sides are part of a competition featuring the No 1, No 2, No 4 and No 5 nations, with England currently fifth.

The All Blacks have yet to play the Boks in this year’s Championship, so South Africans shouldn’t count their chickens before they hatch. The All Blacks invariably get up for their old foe, and if the Kiwis coincide their best effort with a South African off day, they can cause an upset. There was just one point in it in last year’s global final.

SA ABSENCE BECOMING HOT KIWI TALKING POINT

However, that the South African presence in Super Rugby is being missed by New Zealand was a talking point after the All Blacks’ shock loss to Argentina, who have won two of their last three matches on Kiwi soil. Speaking on the Breakdown rugby television show, All Black legends John Kirwan, Jeff Wilson and Mils Miluiana were in agreement that the South African presence was being missed. And missed badly.

There is still strong rivalry between the two trans-Tasman teams, the All Blacks and Wallabies, but it is no longer the case that Kiwis would regard the Bledisloe Cup as the next big thing in rugby to the World Cup, bigger than the Tri-Nations/Championship. For 20 years have passed since the epic battles between the two teams that were at that stage up with the world leaders.

It has become horribly one-sided since then, and while the days have gone where Australian franchise teams don’t ever win against New Zealand teams, which was the case in the final years of the SA participation, that may just be because standards are slipping. And the limp Wallaby performance against the Boks, where they failed to make any impression in any area of the game, underlined that, as did the All Black defeat later in the day.

AUSSIE DEMISE SHOULD BE GLOBAL CONCERN

The Wallaby slide should be concerning to more than just Aussie rugby union fans. It is a concern for the entire rugby community given that there is a British and Irish Lions series scheduled for Australia next year. At this point it looks like being no race, and those iconic series do need to be competitive for them to stay relevant.

Then comes a World Cup in Australia in 2027. Overseas fans will still pitch up for the global tournament regardless of the standing of the Wallabies at the time, but unless coach Joe Schmidt can effect a miraculous improvement in the next three years, it will lack the extra edge that comes with the host nation being competitive and in with a chance of winning it. Particularly as Australia is a nation used to sporting success.

The Wallabies exited at the end of the pool phase of the last World Cup in France, and on the evidence of what we saw at the Suncorp Stadium at the weekend, they may well do so again. There was a time when the Wallabies were at least able to be competitive against the Boks by being more innovative, but this time around the Boks out-innovated them with their split pod lineout try as well as the way Cheslin Kolbe was deployed, while retaining their physical superiority and power game dominance.

OVERSEAS PLAYER POLICY REQUIRES REVISION

It’s the depth available to Australia though that is the biggest concern, and surely the time has come for the Australian authorities to rethink their policy on overseas based players. In the European leagues there are some potentially world beating players making statements every week but they are ineligible to play for their country.

That South African franchise players get to pit themselves against those players and those teams is to this country’s advantage. The Carling Currie Cup doesn’t really excite me from an overall quality viewpoint, and it is a development competition these days, but I thought it was noticeable in the game between Western Province and the Cheetahs this past weekend that South Africans have got much better at playing in wet conditions.

That would have come from an infusion of influence from the URC, where there are so many different conditions and playing styles you have to counter that you have to be adaptable. There are one-sided games, particularly on the fast fields of the highveld, but then in the overseas games you sometimes see tight, low scoring games in which what we used to call test match strategy is employed.

The departure of the South Africans was the worst thing to happen to New Zealand (I fancy the Aussies would remain poor regardless), but switching to the northern hemisphere competitions, which demands among other things development of greater depth at franchise level, was the best thing to happen to South Africa.

That is not to say we don’t miss New Zealand, which is why it is such a good thing that regular proper tours between the countries are planned going forward, but they are isolated. The opposite can be said for South Africa currently and it is one of the reasons the Boks are heading into what should be a period of sustained success.