Aussies wary of the Sharks...

@Redsman,

The Sharks from within South Africa are easily seen as the leading SA team.
The squad depth in most positions combined with Jake White as the coach has created big expectations. They are probably our only realistic chance of winning this years tournament.

The Bulls have just been raided "again" by the Northern Hemisphere and they have a very junior squad, except for Grandad Matfield.

The Stormers have lost some quality players as well- and they have a very tough tour against the traditional best Australasia teams.
Plus the Stormers defense seems to be getting worked out more and more with chip kicks behind their push defense line,
with the Stormers attack seeming to be nothing more than a promise at the start of each season.
Schalk Burger coming back from injury could be a talisman dark horse. A backrow of Schalk and Vermuelen will allways be hard to contain.

The Cheetas as usual have lost players to other richer teams in SA, and some to international clubs.

The weak rand currency allways makes it hard to retain mid-level experienced players, especially when they have do not seem themselves in the Springbok picture. Bringing the Springbok 2007 team out of retirement has also helped with the overseas departures.

The Lions are just a joke in bad taste and not up to standard. The Kings should still be in the tournament. The Lions usually give up early in the season, and can only pick themselves off the floor occasionally for local derbies.

Just taking the Lions, Rebels and Western Rebels out of the tournament to make a Super12 again would be a massive improvement- with each team playing each other. Less injuries and a high standard of the tournament. Maybe also dropping out the Canes as well to make it a Super 11.

For Australia, competing with the more established and higher paying League format of the game, the depth issue has seriously weakened the Australian conference in recent years.

The Tahs were consistently a great team, just like the Brumbies, as were the Reds along time ago.
The Force had a decent start but weakened the depth of the 3 leading teams, and then when the Melbourne Rebels the player pool in certain positions- especially in the tight5, could not cope.

This showed against South African teams depth in the tight five, as well as ball carriers in the backrow. Even the Kings pushed many of the Auzzie teams last year.

On the plus side Australia did dominate the New Zealand teams last year.

I read an article recently saying that Australia did not make a profit last year in SuperXV, and expect another loss this year.
The whole benefit of the new tournament was splitting the reevenue 33/33/33 %.
Not sure where money is not coming in, maybe not enough viewership TV figures or people visiting the games in OZ.

I did read an article a while ago saying that the current CEO of Australia SuperXV blames his predeccesor and his fat cat board for paying out all the profits in bonuses, sounds like the banks.