modern-look tournament starts next week with 18 teams aiming to reach August’s final and long season will add to pressure for a global season’The modern Super Rugby season was launched this week all over the southern hemisphere. A tournament that started out as the Super 6 in 1992 has expanded threefold,taking in teams from modern Zealand, Australia, and South Africa,Japan and Argentina as it looks to combat European club aggression by expanding its commercial base.
The result is that a tournament once a round robin with play-offs to determine the champions is now, in the words of a modern Zealand commentator, or all style and no substance,the opposite of how the Six Nations is regarded in the south. “perhaps if the music is loud and everyone keeps dancing, no one will notice a competition that once had everything now has nearly nothing, and ” he wrote.
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Source: theguardian.com