After watching Super Rugby’s four quarter-finals this weekend it is hard not to be left with the feeling that Europe has an enormous advantage heading into the tenth Rugby World Cup. Especially now that the South African franchises are part of the old world.
There has always been a gaping chasm between the quality of Super Rugby and its various European counterparts. The French and English club games were not short of some powerful teams and the various incarnations of Celtic and Italian leagues were often exciting, but the best of the northern hemisphere would have been blown away by the Super Rugby elite.
The Crusaders, the most successful southern hemisphere side, were the All Blacks in terms of intensity, while the Hurricanes, Highlanders, Chiefs and Blues all had stunning skills. And if it wasn’t quite as dynamic at the breakdown as the international variant, there was the Rugby Championship to hone the epicentre of the Test game.
This World Cup year, instead of six matches between Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, there are only three Rugby Championship games plus an additional pair of fixtures after the competition. Between the semi-finals of Super Rugby and New Zealand’s match with France on September 8, the dominant rugby nations have a vast amount of catching up to do.
There is no comparison between what Leinster and La Rochelle produced in the final and anything we witnessed last weekend. The speed and accuracy of the Irish side’s defence and the poise and power of the team who face Toulouse in next weekend’s French Top 14 final is so superior that it is difficult to even dream of the Crusaders competing successfully against the French and Irish elite.
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Contrary to those who claim otherwise, this does have an impact on the fortunes of the international game. South African sides are finding their feet in what are — for them — new European tournament concepts. In Super Rugby, they were often second fiddle to the New Zealand teams (and sometimes Australia’s big guns, the Waratahs, Brumbies and Reds) but they were providing their own unique blend to the game, which helped to prepare their seasonal rivals.
Week after week the south’s best players were up against the skills and the rugby intelligence of one another. The Springboks tended to be ready by the time the World Cup cycle came around, but while they have had success in the United Rugby Championship, they have struggled in the higher reaches of Europe. Caught between hemispheres, South Africa may struggle despite that ferocious will to win.
As for the Australia and New Zealand contingent, they have dropped a long way off their European rivals. Watching the Waratahs get comprehensively walloped by the Blues in the first quarter-final of the weekend was a reminder of their sluggish line speed. The New Zealand side strode unopposed over the gain line. There has been a marked lack of pressure from the Waratahs’ defence all season.
The Crusaders beat Fijian Drua in another quarter-final with ease. It is always welcome to see the Fijians play the game, but this side treated defence as an option. The ease with which the Crusaders scored from close range was a reminder that New Zealand have a pack capable of doing damage, but more than anything this was another illustration of the weakness prevalent throughout Super Rugby for much of the season.
It isn’t being played at pace. And no, these aren’t the hopeful words of a northern hemisphere observer who is fed up with All Black, Australian and South African hegemony at the World Cup. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the New Zealand model win a few more competitions to set an exhilarating global example of how to play the game.
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Back in 2020, Harlequins’ Joe Marchant travelled south to Auckland as part of a sabbatical and joined the Blues, where he played seven games while mixing with some of the world’s best players. On his return to London, he stressed the pressure on making quick decisions that arose from the intense speed of battle at contact. Everything happened more quickly, he said. The high-scoring games were not so much “basketball rugby” and more a vision of union where attack’s ambition and accuracy held sway over defence. This was the diametric opposite of Europe and its negative drudgery of the early professional years when defence coaches were revered.
As Super Rugby reaches the semi-final stage I am less sure that the southern hemisphere possesses the honed instincts to handle Andy Farrell’s Ireland and Fabien Galthié’s France. As for Marchant, he is leaving Harlequins and this time not on a short-term sabbatical. From next season he will play his rugby for Stade Français.
When he went south in 2020 it was all for the experience. This time the money makes its mark on his decision. But he and other English players, such as Jack Willis, are not simply taking the mercenary option. Marchant returned from Auckland an infinitely better player. It’s now France where the game is at the cutting edge for modern talent.
The success of La Rochelle and Toulouse — winners of the past three European Champions Cups — emphasises their dominance in Europe but the commitment to merging old-fashioned French bulk with the beautiful back play of the ancien régime singles France out as the centre of the rugby universe.
In comparison, Super Rugby looks a ragged cousin. Nations such as Australia will be improved with the returning contingent of Japan-based players but they and New Zealand may find their basics at the breakdown and in defence insufficiently instinctive to handle the speed, the precision and the broken-field brilliance of France and Ireland.
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Throughout the professional era, New Zealand has been the place to watch the game at its best and analyse where the trends are taking it. Kiwi-controlled Super Rugby has carried Australia in its Pacific wake. Unless these teams adapt now to European intensity, the rugby world is set to tilt on its axis and maybe even change its language after 40 years of southern superiority.
