2 days Ago By Harry Jones
Until the current occupant of the White House caused all the puppet nose timber to be depleted, the Washington Post used to score outlandish claims with Pinocchios: one was iffy, two half-true, three misinformation and four just pure hogwash. Ex-Wallaby halfback Nick Phipps: take five.Super Rugby Pacific has held 15 matches in 2025 so far with an average scoreline of 37.
5 to 28. Only one team in 30 has been held below 20; four below 25; almost ten tries per match scored.The competition is a sprint: 14 matches round the robin, six into the finals (two byes).
If the season were to end today, two teams would qualify without a positive points differential.Tries have been scored often, but also early, when neither side is tired. Tries have come off set piece, maul, phases, short-handed, and at the death.
For the “just the highlights” crowd: brilliant.Does it get much better than this?! ????#SuperRugbyPacific #WARvDRU pic.twitter.
com/VBDGFkbHaE— Super Rugby Pacific (@SuperRugby) February 28, 2025However, given Super Rugby’s role as Test rugby farm system, and the British and Irish Lions soon coming, some would look at this situation as dire for the defensive chances of the Wallabies. How do you learn to win a three line-break, two try, one point match when 45-42 is de rigueur?A win over England in a defensively dubious match is not likely to be repeated against Andy Farrell’s team with some of the best bronco times in the world, two monster packs, and knockout ambiance.Apologists build a counterargument around the difference between “hard, fast, fatigue rugby” down south and “slow, physical, set piece rugby” up north.
Just as obsolete opinions about how to beat the Springboks led to big spankings recently (“run their big forwards around and then run around them” until it was clear the Bok bench was faster and fitter than the Wallabies), we may be seeing wishful thinking taking hold this year: by Phipps!After Iain Payten told Tim Horan, Michael Atkinson and Phipps on Stan Sport “the key stat that gets talked about a lot at Super Rugby Pacific in the head office there and even amongst the referees is game duration,” taking care to distinguish “first whistle to last whistle” from the less reliable “ball-in-play”, which Payten noted can be skewed. He revealed Super Rugby Pacific’s games were about 91 minutes in duration last year (not counting halftime), teasing out all stoppages, and claimed: “That’s about four or five minutes quicker than ..
. URC or ..
. Top 14 et cetera.”He credited referees for “getting miffed” if “there’s stoppages that they don’t want.
”Nick Phipps believes the top 5 northern hemisphere teams would struggle to survive in #SuperRugbyPacific ???? What do you think?#StanSportAU #InsideLine pic.twitter.com/ZWQGizzhzw— Stan Sport Rugby (@StanSportRugby) March 5, 2025A revelation there is indeed a “head office” of Super Rugby Pacific where rugby is talked about was pleasing.
The idea that a game is being rushed to finish in an hour and a half brought me little joy. That same URC has seen attendance rise 30% in 2023, 15% in 2024, big stadia sell outs in Cape Town, Dublin, Durban, and Limerick is closing in on two million in attendance, and the fastest social media growth. The Top 14 now has a budget of 471 million euros and an eight-year TV deal, which will spin off 10 million euros per Pro D2 club (a tenth of what their senior brethren do, but still healthier than what Rugby Australia give each of its clubs.
Perhaps copying, not cursing, what is working, should be the idea.But I took Payten’s main point: if each half of Super Rugby is two minutes shorter, players will be more tired. Thus, the spate of scoring is not a bad sign; it is just because attack prevails when defence is exhausted.
However, tries have issued at all points of the clock, from as early as 40 seconds in by Du’Plessis Kirifi from a peach of a try assist by Cam Roigard against the Fijian Drua in Napier.The flood of tries certainly cannot be solely ascribed to these two fewer minutes a half in duration.Perhaps the attack is just that much better, but the defence still just as good as in northern leagues?A bearded Phipps agreed, jumping from data to “anec-data,” saying he had watched Six Nations “three or four weeks ago” and a “nine was down having a break, pretending he was injured”, but Ben O’Keeffe told him to get up; which Phipps endorsed.
He finished the segment with this assertion:“I would argue that you couldn’t drop the best five club teams of the northern hemisphere into Super Rugby and they’d survive, whereas we could drop our best five in the ...
Northern Hemisphere and they’d do really well.”The music screeched.The best five club teams of the North right now and recently, based on league results and the Champions Cup are likely Leinster, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Toulon, and Northampton.
We do not need to give the “survival” chances of Leinster if they suddenly moved to Manly and plied their trade much worry. Leinster is Ireland with Jordie Barrett and RG Snyman on the bench, and Jacques Nienaber coaching defence. They are unbeaten in all competitions this season, and almost never allow two tries.
Their fullback Hugo Keenan is said to be the fittest player in rugby, and their game is built on fitness in attack phases as well as stinging, aggressive defence.Their team sheet is: Porter, Sheehan, Furlong, Ryan, McCarthy, Baird, van der Flier, Doris, Gibson-Park, Prenderfast, Lowe, Henshaw, Ringrose, Osborne, Keenan, with Barrett and Snyman on next.All Blacks star Jordie Barrett (L) and double World Cup-winning Springboks lock RG Snyman (R) of Leinster celebrate after defeating ASM Clermont Auvergne at the Aviva Stadium.
(Photo By Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images)Leinster would have an exponentially better chance of winning in New Zealand than the Reds, Brumbies, Waratahs and Force. How do we know that? A very similar version of them beat the All Blacks and would enter every match against a more diluted version of the national team at 50-50 if not favourites against whoever is third to fifth that year. They would welcome the shorter game time and likely enjoy Sydney’s vibe.
Their Test pedigree would stand them in good stead to survive, perhaps a bit easier than a couple of existing Super Rugby Pacific teams. They easily make the finals, as they enter the 22 about ten times a game, no matter who they play, and are stingy about it the other way around.Toulouse could play out of Melbourne where their locks Manny Meafou and Richie Arnold will feel at home.
They sport a 23 man game day squad with 750 Test caps and can bring on Juan Cruz Mallia, Pita Ahki, Ange Capuozzo, Santiago Chocobares, and Blair Kinghorn when the French guys like Antoine Dupont, Thomas Ramos, and Romain Ntamack get tired by the quicker breaks. Two Test hookers, Peato Mauvaka and Julien Marchand combine perfectly with Anthony Jelonch and Francois Cros, but it is Jack Willis who might enjoy sparring most with Fraser McReight and Carlo Tizzano.Accustomed to a 26-match season in the Top 14, plus seven or eight in Champions, the abbreviated Super Rugby season would allow them to platoon less, and field their crushing top level skill to almost every game.
They would likely qualify near to the top of or ahead of all Australian teams.Antoine Dupont’s Toulouse celebrate after beating Leinster in extra time at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on May 25, 2024 in London. (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)The Saints play a style quite suited to Super Rugby, scoring 34% of their tries from their own half, using kick return 17.
5% of the time, and love to chuck the ball around almost as much as Leinster. They could play out of another Brisbane suburb, near Angus Scott-Young’s place, and field a backline of Alex Mitchell, Fin Smith, Tommy Freeman, Fraser Dingwall, Rory Hutchinson, Ollie Sleightholme and George Furbank, with James Ramm off the bench so it does not seem so much like the actual backline of England. If Josh Kemeny and the boys from South Africa, Fiji, Samoa, Scotland and other spots do their job, the Brisbane Bears would surely love playing Super Rugby style.
And qualify, unless Bordeaux, with Guido Petti, Jonny Gray, Pete Samu, Tevita Tatafu and a few Tongan star props harvesting ball for Damian Penaud, Louis Bielle-Biarrey, Maxime Lucu and Matthieu Jalibert to play with; UBB would squeeze in, as well.Unless Toulon’s sailor-tough battlers, based on the Gold Coast, pushed them out: one of the toughest packs in the world with Facundo Isa, Charles Ollivon, Kyle Sinckler, Jean-Baptiste Gros, and Beka Gigashvili could give Leicester Fainga’anuku, Gabin Villiere, Melvyn Jaminet, Seta Tuicuvu, Paolo Garbisi, Ben White (or Baptiste Serin) so much room to scamper.The more we look at the list, the more we wonder who would survive from current Aussie teams? Over the last decade, the Brumbies (the most “northern” and least “super” of Aussies) may have.
The Crusaders and a couple of Kiwi teams over that same period: would have relished the battles.What of Pinocchio Phipps’ allegation: “we could drop our best five in the Northern Hemisphere and they’d do really well?” It is not clear what “really well” means, but if we take last year’s standings, the 2-loss teams (Hurricanes, Blues, Brumbies) as well as the Chiefs and Reds, all were at or above 100 points positive over 14 rounds. The Chiefs and Blues, based on the knockouts, would be good bets to go far in the Champions Cup, and finish high in the URC or Top 14 or Premiership.
The Reds and Brumbies, in a doubled season, would surely “survive” but also surely not do better in those more brutal competitions than the accelerated one here.Queensland’s Fraser McReight has been voted Australia’s best player in Super Rugby for the past two years. (Photo by Albert Perez/Getty Images)This is no knock on the current competitors.
In this war of words, Phipps trolled first.The northern leagues have 40 teams from which the top eighth (five clubs) is a cut above. Their schedules are far longer.
They are now tested by South African power, augmented by Argentinian internationals, paid the best, and have a higher proportion of innovative coaches. Importantly, their defensive systems are better.New Zealand can catch up at Test level and does: as Clayton McMillan, soon to be in Munster, admitted recently, the problem with Super Rugby is the style is too similar (“we largely play the same”) and the Kiwis know they miss the South African challenge at club level, even if 300 Saffa (and 50% of their top) players are abroad.
McMillan says, “we need to play a little bit differently” and points to the Blues’ win as an example: one which the Chiefs have taken on.Australia shows none of the dominance in both hemispheres Phipps imagines. He diluted a decent point by Payten, buried the main issue, and extrapolated so far down the branch, he fell off.
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