The Unintended Consequences of Super Rugby’s Big Team Divorces

With the Cheetahs and the Kings out of the running for Super Rugby honours, what are the implications for the game, in South African and abroad?

I got retrenched a few years back. Sadly, it’s fairly mainstream in today’s tough economic climate, but it is still a hair raising thing to go through. A bit like a divorce, I reckon – tough on both parties, but a lot tougher on the person who believes things can still work out.

Those asking for the divorce, much like the companies forced into retrenching staff, often feel a massive sense of guilt. This while the jilted parties are at their most vulnerable and open to picking up the scraps.

Bad decisions get made. Decisions that seem okay at the time, but come with unintended consequences. Like when the company feels bad about retrenching their social media community manager, so offers them the vacancy in finance as a debtor’s clerk.

It can only end in tears.

SA Rugby have just retrenched the Cheetahs and Kings. Or are they going through a divorce? Either way, both teams are out of Vodacom Super Rugby and as part of the settlement, the discarded franchises are off to Europe to play in an expanded Pro12 tournament, starting in September.

Given what is going on in Australia (they have also been tasked with dropping a franchise by SANZAAR), and in a country that courts controversy without looking for it, this separation has gone far too smoothly.

I smell unintended consequences. South Africa does not have the player resources to stock six professional franchises, so sending the Kings and Cheetahs to play in Europe defeats the purpose of the Super Rugby cull – which was for South Africa and Australia to use players from the exiting franchises to stock a more competitive set of 4 franchises in each country. All this move does is set us up to play in two tournaments with under resourced franchises instead of one.

But in a divorce and retrenchment, there has to be some compensation for the jilted party, and the Cheetahs and Kings were contracted to play Super Rugby until the end of this current SANZAAR agreement which ends in 2020.

Enter their offload to the Pro12, which SA Rugby are now claiming as having been long in the making. An opportunity to trial a new market given the tragic decline in Super Rugby, they say. They ain’t wrong about Super Rugby, though. The 2005 Super 12, offering up just 69 games in total, had close on a million more TV viewers than the 125 game version in 2015!

So the Pro12 not only presents an opportunity to take a gander at the European market while remaining “committed” to the SANZAAR product, but also presents SA Rugby with a way to finance their contractual obligations to the Cheetahs and Kings.

Smart thinking. But what are the potential unintended consequences?

The six-year deal is said to benefit the Pro12 league to the tune of £6-million per season from the additional television income, but how will that money be split? Will the SA sides continue to be paid in Rands against opposition paid in Euros? Will that only attract players wanting to use the Pro12 as a stepping stone to playing in Europe, and thus just further add to our player drain? What about the logistical implications of playing during the SA Summer? And what happens if the SA sides qualify for Europe’s Champions or Challenge Cup? Are they allowed to play?

Both sides have been tasked with staffing up in order to be competitive in Europe, this while also participating in the local Currie Cup, which kicked off on 21 July. Is that even possible? Might an unintended consequence of this hasty post-retrenchment package see the once mighty Currie Cup finally implode?

Just as that community manager may end up as the world’s greatest debtor’s clerk, so might this end up being the smartest move ever made for South African rugby. But more often than not, divorce and retrenchment require time apart before friendships can be rekindled.

• This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.