• Welcome to the Green and Gold Rugby forums. As you can see we've upgraded the forums to new software. Your old logon details should work, just click the 'Login' button in the top right.

Waratahs v Chiefs - Round 14 - Friday 27 May 2016

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hawko

Hawko

Tony Shaw (54)
Braveheart81 said:
I agree. I think the 8 African conference teams are really just a good Jaguares team away from seeming balanced.

If there was an NZ, Aus, SA and Arg home quarter final it would seem pretty good.

NZ being so much better than everyone else has made it seem tougher on Australia. Realistically the Lions could be the best non NZ side in the competition.

Sent from my HTC_PN071 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


Your idea of balance and mine are somewhat different.

Originally I expected the Jaguares to be a leading team but in doing so I forgot how hard the Super comp is on newcomers. Even the mighty Crusaders didn't make the finals till their third year in. I now don't expect the Jaguares to be competitive till the third year and the travel will always be worse for them than anyone else except maybe the Sunwolves, especially if the Saffers keep up the ridiculous Singapore requirement.

The best two SA teams are the Lions and the Sharks. They are in the same conference and have had to play the NZ teams. In the other conference are the Stormers and the Bulls. The Stormers are currently in a guaranteed finals spot and have to play the Rebels, Force and Kings. They have not played a NZ team and have one win against a top eight team (Brumbies at home). They couldn't even beat the Sunwolves in Singapore yet will get a guaranteed home quarter final. Their opponents for that QF spot are the Bulls who have lost to every team above them on the table, but might yet make it because they play the Jaguares, Kings and Cheetahs in the last three rounds and the Sharks, who are only three points to the good, have to play the Lions away next up.

Its a dogs breakfast designed to get the SA teams an unfair advantage and if something isn't done to rectify it the whole competition will suffer, and the Heineken Cup (or whatever they call it now) will take over as the world's premier rugby club competition.
 
Braveheart81

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Whilst you've got two conferences and four divisions I don't know what else you can do. Division/Conference winners should get home finals.

The options to change things are either the a 17 round single round robin where you just make it the top 8 teams seeded as they finish (which Australia wouldn't vote for).

Or make it three divisions of 6 with Japan joining Australia and Argentina joining NZ and 6 SA teams. Make 3 winners host finals and then have either 3 or 5 wild cards (with the next wildcard also hosting a final if it's an 8 team finals series).

I don't think they're about to go with that option.

The SA teams get an advantage in that 2 of 8 get a home final in week 1. The flipside of that is they only get 1 wildcard team versus 3 wildcards in the Australasian conference.

I don't think it is reasonable to argue that the whole thing is set up to give South African teams an advantage. It's ended up the way it has because each country has pushed for certain things to happen over the years and it's a mish-mash of trying to make all those things work.

The whole conference/local derby system is the advent of Australia's wishes and arguably that has gone a big way to getting us to the system we have now.
 
Hawko

Hawko

Tony Shaw (54)
A month ago I posted a fairer system on the blog, but I doubt the Saffers would agree to it. The MINIMUM change I would like to see is as follows:
  1. SA teams to play 2/3 Australian teams and 3/2 NZ teams rather than the current 5/0 split.
  2. SA teams to play away matches against the Sunwolves in Tokyo like everyone else.
  3. Guaranteed quarter finals to the SA and Australasian group winners only. All other quarter finalists (6) to be determined by the points on the table.
  4. Home and away semi's and finals to be determined by POINTS on the table, not position.
  5. SA to take over the Kings and inject enough money for them to be competitive. They nearly lost to a team playing with 12 men!
 
Braveheart81

Braveheart81

Will Genia (78)
Staff member
Hawko said:
A month ago I posted a fairer system on the blog, but I doubt the Saffers would agree to it. The MINIMUM change I would like to see is as follows:
  1. Guaranteed quarter finals to the SA and Australasian group winners only. All other quarter finalists (6) to be determined by the points on the table.
  2. Home and away semi's and finals to be determined by POINTS on the table, not position
Click to expand...
I don't mind the rest of them but you're never going to get a conference/division system that doesn't reward teams winning their conference or division over teams that don't. That will always put you ahead in a ranking system over total competition points.

On that point, only two guaranteed finalists would only work if you merged SA1 and SA2 and Aus and NZ so there was a conference of 8 and a conference of 10 and no divisions.

Any competition where the focus in terms of matches played is on your local division will always make winning that the prime driver of finals outcomes.
 
Joeleee

Joeleee

Ted Fahey (11)
Hawko said:
A month ago I posted a fairer system on the blog, but I doubt the Saffers would agree to it. The MINIMUM change I would like to see is as follows:
  1. SA teams to play 2/3 Australian teams and 3/2 NZ teams rather than the current 5/0 split.
  2. SA teams to play away matches against the Sunwolves in Tokyo like everyone else.
  3. Guaranteed quarter finals to the SA and Australasian group winners only. All other quarter finalists (6) to be determined by the points on the table.
  4. Home and away semi's and finals to be determined by POINTS on the table, not position.
  5. SA to take over the Kings and inject enough money for them to be competitive. They nearly lost to a team playing with 12 men!
Click to expand...

I don't think points on the table are any fairer than group winners for most cases. It will very much punish highly competitive conferences, and you could envisage scenarios in which none of the best 5 teams in the comp make the finals (e.g. if NZ teams all beat each other). The conference system is imperfect, but if you have it, the top ranked team in the conference MUST go through to the finals in my opinion.

Edit: BH said it first and said it better, should have refreshed before posting :)
 
Hawko

Hawko

Tony Shaw (54)
Joeleee said:
I don't think points on the table are any fairer than group winners for most cases. It will very much punish highly competitive conferences, and you could envisage scenarios in which none of the best 5 teams in the comp make the finals (e.g. if NZ teams all beat each other). The conference system is imperfect, but if you have it, the top ranked team in the conference MUST go through to the finals in my opinion.

Edit: BH said it first and said it better, should have refreshed before posting :)
Click to expand...


We agree to disagree.
 
Hawko

Hawko

Tony Shaw (54)
Interesting sidelight from the press conference. Right at the end, the question of Nayaravoro came up and Daryl said someone named Tungelli would be ready to play after the break. Those Islander pronunciations always leave me flummoxed.
 
wamberal

wamberal

Phil Kearns (64)
Hawko said:
Interesting sidelight from the press conference. Right at the end, the question of Nayaravoro came up and Daryl said someone named Tungelli would be ready to play after the break. Those Islander pronunciations always leave me flummoxed.
Click to expand...


New Zealanders are a whole lot better at understanding PI culture. That is one reason they are better at rugby per se.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top