Making the Case for Super XV Being Better Than the Six Nations

In Europe, we have been engulfed by Six Nations fever since the tournament began, but a blank weekend somewhat dampened the hullabaloo.

It gave the armchair fan the chance to deploy the remote and seek their rugby fix elsewhere for the weekend. If the Pro 12 and Premiership weren’t to your fancy, it was worth remembering that Super Rugby is back under way.

The 2015 incarnation is now two rounds old. There is much to enjoy from the southern hemisphere’s premier club (let’s call them clubs, but they are more like provinces if you want a comparison to, say, the Celtic teams in the Pro 12) competition.

There is even an argument to say it knocks spots off the Six Nations in some respects. That might sound like heresy if you’ve been reared on a diet of the annual European showpiece and Super Rugby is merely something you have glanced at through the fog of an early Saturday morning wake-up, so let’s form a proper argument in favour of the 15-team, trans-continental tussle.

First, let’s establish some criteria. What do we, in the bleachers, want from our sport? What gets us off our seats?

1. Lots of tries
2. Massive hits
3. High skill levels
4. Offloads
5. Maverick players

So using those yardsticks, let’s now apply them to Super Rugby and the Six Nations.

In 2014, the Super XV produced 572 tries in 243 matches per SANZAR, giving the competition an average of 2.4 tries per game.

The 30 matches played in the 2014 Six Nations yielded 61 five-pointers for an average of 2.03. So, not much in it, but if it’s more tries you’re after per game, go South, young man.

Winner: Super Rugby

Not as easy to quantify as tries per game, but let’s assess this with the help of YouTube compilations.

Rugby Dump’s montage of six of the best hits from last year’s Six Nations Championship features a charge by Mathieu Bastareaud that, frankly, could be worth a yellow card such is the way he leads with the elbow.

His colleague Yoann Huget also features with no attempt to use his arms to stop his Italian opponent.

Leigh Halfpenny’s try-saver on Luther Burrell is a stupendous effort that marries technique with timing and oodles of bravery but is not a breath-taking smash, which leaves a fine hit by Andrew Trimble for Ireland and a huge bosh on Brian O’Driscoll by Wales’ Scott Williams who is also arguably guilty of not using his arms in the tackle.

The Super Rugby compilation from 2014 put together by Sky Sports features a much higher volume of proper, man-on-man bone-shakers.

With the higher number of games, they obviously have a much larger catalogue to choose from. 

But we’re not here to listen to mitigating factors, we’re here to decide.

More games, more hits, one winner.

Winner: Super Rugby

Rugby in the northern hemisphere can often be played in wet weather on muddy fields, which can have an impact on the skills on show.

In the southern hemisphere, the weather at the same time of the year is warm and the conditions well-suited to players able to execute impressive ball skills.

If there is a leveller, it is that the quality of surface for Six Nations games is by and large excellent, and as Spring arrives towards the latter end of the tournament, games are more often bathed in sunshine than soaked in mud.

So who has the better skills? It has to be Super Rugby.

The proliferation of Fijians, Samoans and Tongans allied to the unrivalled skill sets boasted by New Zealanders provides a treasure trove of ability with ball in hand, from slipped passes to sublime sidesteps.

You can argue that no one has more skill with boot on ball in the world than Jonny Sexton, but as far as sheer flare is concerned, the inhabitants of the best Super Rugby sides win hands down.

Winner: Super Rugby

We want to see running rugby, don’t we?

We can all appreciate the artistry with the boot of a Jonny Sexton or a George Ford when they create cross-field kick tries or dink it over the top and collect it themselves.

But, generally, we love to see flowing moves with lots of metres gained with ball in hand and offloading left, right and centre. So far in 2015, France lead the way in the Six Nations with a total of 30 offloads in two games, per the Six Nations website.

Quelle surprise?

Yes, actually, because the highest offloading team in two rounds of Super Rugby has been the Chiefs with 28. Shocker.

Winner: Six Nations

HANG ON A MINUTE

Let’s look at a full campaign on both sides of the equator. In 2014, France topped the offloading stats with 84 in five games per the Guardian, an average of 16.8 per game.

This perhaps suggests that obituaries for Gallic flare have been penned prematurely. In their victorious 2014 Super XV season, the Waratahs played 18 games and offloaded 258 times for 14.3 per game. Good grief.

Winner: Still the Six Nations

A simple question: Which competition has the most mavericks?

By definition, these are the unorthodox, free-spirited players who laugh when you show them a game plan and think the rule book is nought more than a decent substitute when they’ve run out of loo roll.

Since the French started opting for muscle over grey matter, we have seen less of the likes of Thomas Castaignede and Philippe Sella, players who trod that fine line between genius and disaster.

England have been robotic for over a decade, with Danny Cipriani the closest thing to the category—and look how many caps he has in his cupboard.

Brian O’Driscoll was not so much maverick as simply superhuman, while Wales, brilliant though they have been, have more sledgehammers than side-steppers.

Italy had Alessandro Troncon, their pirate hat-wearing, jig-dancing, wild-eyed No. 9 for a while, but no more. Maybe the lion-maned prop Martin Castrogiovanni, with his caveman looks and occasional X-rated media briefings, per Rugby Dump, could take that crown. Scotland had, well, no one of any note for a while until Stuart Hogg came along. A maverick in the making perhaps.

In the Super 15, over the years their team sheets have been peppered with names like Carlos Spencer, Sonny Bill Williams, Kurtley Beale and Quade Cooper. Unorthodox, unpredictable men who could twist your blood with their combined repertoire of banana kicks, shimmies, sleight of hand and outrageous offloading ability. Williams even likes to take time out to hit people for a extra few quid and has hopped the league-union divide no less than three times.

They’ve also had wingers like Rupeni Caucaunibuca, a 17 stone Fijian who ran like the Road Runner and had the appearance of someone who ate like a truck driver. As the commentator says during this montage, you could not coach what he had.

There remain more men who can produce rabbits from hats playing in Super Rugby than there are in the Six Nations, although a mention here for the tournament’s latest darling Jonathan Joseph—a man who could seemingly run rings round you in a phone box.

Winner: Super Rugby

Final Score: Super Rugby 4-1 Six Nations.