Recently, I had a discussion on The Roar about the changes that will take place from 2016. Among considerable debate, I said that the changes would benefit the South African sides.
To add more than just a subjective discussion I thought I would take the results from this year and morph them into what end table would look like in 2016.
From 2016, there will be four conferences.
There would be two South African conferences of four teams each. The existing five teams, plus the Kings, an Argentine side and and Asian side.
The Australian and New Zealand conferences would remain the same. Each team will play 15 games.
The Australian and New Zealand conference will play every team in each others conference once. That is five games. They will also play two teams within their conference and the other two teams just once. That is six games.
They will also play just one of the SA conferences, the four teams in that conference once. That makes 15 games.
The SA conference will play every team in its own conference. That is six games. It will also play the other SA conference, the four teams in that conference once. They will also only play either the Australian or New Zealand conference and every team in it. That is five games. This makes 15 games.
I split the SA conferences to have Sharks (1), Lions (4), Cheetahs (5), and Singapore (8) in one conference, and Bulls (2), Stormers (3), Kings (6), and Argentina (7) in the other conference.
My hypothesis was that since the SA teams get to play the new weaker teams more and already have weak teams in Lions and Cheetahs they would get a lot of easier points. The counter argument offered was that the SA teams were very competitive within their conference games so they did not get easy points.
I took this year’s results from the Australian and New Zealand teams. I deducted one home and one away game within the conference, working from the latest results backwards. For example the Tahs lost the Reds and Brumbies results.
Then I added the result of the missing trans tasman games using last year’s results: Tahs-Crusaders, Brumbies-Highlanders, Rebels-Blues, Reds-Chiefs, Force-Hurricanes.
Then I deducted the results from the SA conference games. I chose Australia to play the SA conference one with Sharks heading it and New Zealand to play the SA conference two with Bulls heading it. The reasoning being the New Zealand teams performed better against the Kings and thus I wanted to skew the results against my hypothesis.
Thus from the Australian teams I deducted the results against Bulls and Stormers, and from the New Zealand teams I deducted the results from Sharks, Lions and Cheetahs.
I deducted the results from the SA teams as well.
Since the Brumbies did not play the Lions this year, Blues the Stormers, and Crusaders the Bulls I used the 2013 results – 2012 for Lions. The Waratahs did not play the Cheetahs but since the Cheetahs had a much poorer year this year and the Tahs a much better one, I rejected the result last year as to not skew the result towards my hypothesis.
From the SA conferences I deducted one home or away game from the other SA conference working from the latest results backwards. As an example Stormers-Sharks and Sharks-Bulls games were deducted. Remember they only play the opposite conference once.
Finally I added results for the new teams. For the Kings I added their 2013 results. For the Blues, the New Zealand team that did not play them. For Bulls and Stormers I added both the 2013 results.
For the Sharks, Lions and Cheetahs, I added their worst results against the Kings to further skew away from my hypothesis.
For the new Argentina and Singapore teams I gave five points to every team that played them. For Bulls, Stormers, Sharks, Lions, Cheetahs this was 15 points, for the New Zealand and Australian teams this was five points.
The existing table
Waratahs 58
Crusaders 51
Sharks 50
Brumbies 45
Chiefs 44
Highlanders 42
Hurricanes 41
Force 40
Bulls 38
Blues 37
Stormers 32
Lions 31
Reds 28
Cheetahs 24
Rebels 21
The hypothetical 2016 table
Note the top four spots are taken by the leader of each conference with the next four by wildcards. The top eight are the finalists in the new system.
Crusaders 56
Waratahs 52
Bulls 50
Sharks 48
Brumbies 51
Hurricanes 47
Blues 47
Stormers 42
then
Chiefs 39
Force 37
Lions 36
Highlanders 35
Cheetahs 35
Reds 30
Rebels 28.
The SA conferences benefit substantially from the proposed system. By and large SA teams have more points and improved their places. Therefore, it seems that from 2016 the Super Rugby format – which has been insisted on by the South Africans – will benefit them more than any other participating nation.
