To bye or not to bye

It may seem a bit early to start talking about the play-off rounds of Super Rugby when there are still two rounds to go and so much uncertainty, but down in the Cape they are guaranteed at least a place in the top six so maybe it is time to start looking ahead.

The switch in the 15-team competition to a six-team and three-week Finals Series from the four-team and two-week format introduces almost as many intriguing questions as there are uncertainties.

For the first time the teams that finish as low as fifth and sixth on the final log will still be alive when the Finals Series starts. And for the first time the teams that finish third and fourth won’t have a guaranteed place in the semifinals as they find themselves playing off against the fifth and sixth teams for the right to go to the last four.

I have never followed the 13-man game but I am told by people who have followed and studied a Rugby League competition in Australia where a similar format is employed that it has been uncanny the number of times that a team that finishes outside of the top four has managed to sweep through in the play-offs to win the title.

On the face of it that would appear not to make much sense, but then maybe if you think about it more closely it does.

The fifth or sixth ranked team would have gone into a slump at some stage of the season, lost more games, and perhaps not always had all their personnel available. As they weren’t among the front-runners the whole way through, they might have faced a different kind of pressure from what was faced by the top-ranked teams.

In South Africa, for instance, there has been a sense for a while now that both the Bulls and the Sharks have been playing knock-out games (the Bulls since Easter, the Sharks since more recently). They have therefore got themselves into a knock-out mindset which will mean little changes for them if they reach the qualifiers.

And if they win their qualifier, they go into a semifinal against a team that rested the previous week battle hardened and with the advantage of already having played an official knock-out match. The effort and emotion that goes into winning a qualifier would have translated into a form of momentum that their opponents wouldn’t have.

Which introduces an additional question which can only be answered when the Finals Series arrives – is the bye that the top two teams get going to be a good thing or a bad thing? Will their absence from the cutting edge of the qualifiers backfire on the top teams?

We have seen enough evidence in recent seasons to suggest that the bye is sometimes a negative factor. The Sharks, for instance, were pretty woeful in their first 20 minutes back from their first bye against the Hurricanes, and even worse when they got blown away by the Bulls in the first quarter after their second bye.

Some players have acknowledged that it can take 20 minutes or so to rediscover the momentum and synchronisation that was there before the bye. In a semifinal, where the stakes are so high and the pressure so great, a slow start could mean tickets to that team’s title aspirations.

But then the bye has also worked for some teams. When the Stormers came back from their bye against the Sharks after Easter they started like a boiling kettle. And last year the Bulls, after resting almost their entire team for the final league game against the Stormers the week before, also cooked in the early minutes of their semifinal against the Crusaders in Soweto.

Perhaps that Bulls game is the closest pointer as to whether a bye at this stage of the competition would be a good thing or a bad thing. Their management felt the players needed a rest as they had played many weeks consecutively, and they were vindicated when the Bulls smashed the Crusaders in the semifinal.

The Stormers need a bye more than any other team as they started the season one week late and they have played all their matches in the second half of the competition consecutively. By the time the Finals Series arrives, they would have played eight consecutive weeks, and for them it will surely be time for them to rest.

For the Crusaders though, it might be a different story as they have just had a bye, and with several players coming back from injury, the extra qualifier might be what they need to build momentum. For them a rest might just upset what rhythm is built between now and the qualifiers just over a fortnight from now.

What complicates Super Rugby though more than any other kind of competition is the travel, and the Crusaders won’t be happy if playing a qualifier means they have to fly to South Africa for it. And for South African teams ending in the wild card placings, meaning they play in the qualifiers, there is the prospect of having to undertake two trips to Australasia in order to win the competition.

A daunting task indeed!