The Super Rugby Pacific final should be one hell of a game. Two powerful, athletic and highly skilled teams, clearly the best two of the competition, crashing headlong into each other like two mighty bighorns driven to reckless brain damage by ewe-lust, testing each other’s strength, speed, precision and resolve in the ultimate confrontation to decide who truly is the pre-eminent regional rugby power.
It’s likely to be such a fantastic contest, in fact, that I feel a bit guilty for not caring about it even a little bit.
Really. I just don’t care. At all.
Now, just to be clear from the outset, I am not saying that you should not care about the final. I am simply saying that I do not care about it, and that as a professional sports writer, my opinion is more important than yours.
(Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
I mean, I am, I suppose, interested, in a vague, academic way, in who wins the SRP final. I am slightly curious to see who comes out on top. I might even watch a bit of the game, if I’m not too busy.
But care? Actually feel any emotional investment in the result? Have any sense that one outcome will make me happy and another will make me sad?
No. None of that.
If an Australian team were playing, I’d care a lot, of course. I’d feel my insides ball up into a fist at the tension of it, I’d undergo agonies watching the game, my spirits soaring every time the Aussie side scored and feeling a cold stab to the guts every time they were scored against. I’d curse the uncertainty and recall ruefully John Cleese’s words, “It’s not the despair. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand.”
Cleese’s timeless quote sums up the experience of watching the Wallabies for almost my entire adult life, and though that constant battering about the head and shoulders by the knobbly club of hope has caused much pain and made me wish I’d been raised to hate rugby, it always did indicate one thing: I cared.
I always care when the Wallabies play, and I always care when an Australian Super team plays a New Zealand one. But two New Zealand teams playing each other? Meh.
What’s worse is that I don’t care all that much more when two Australian teams play each other either. If the Waratahs were playing the Reds in this weekend’s final, I would mildly favour the Tahs, and feel a little disappointed when they inevitably lost. But not really upset.
Not the way I feel when the Australian cricket team loses a Test, or when the Melbourne Storm or Sydney Swans lose the grand final (and I’ve had plenty of practice at those kinds of disappointments). I’d mainly feel great joy at the fact that two Australian teams made the final, and my happiness at the Reds taking the title would overwhelm that little twinge of disappointment. It would also make the experience of watching the final extremely relaxing – two Australian teams means I can’t lose, and no need to be stressed.
Which would be lovely for me, but it’s not great for the competition, is it? It doesn’t say a lot for Super Rugby’s ability to stir the passions.
Look, I might be the only one who feels this way. I know that plenty of people don’t. I am sure that there are many thousands of New Zealanders who will be utterly rabid in roaring on one team or the other this weekend. And I think that’s fantastic. I am just worried because SRP doesn’t make me feel that way, and because I suspect I’m not alone (but again, maybe I am! I concede the possibility!)
This week will also see the rugby league State of Origin played, and I will care deeply about that. In fact if NSW loses game two I will be depressed for at least a whole day, and up to three weeks. State of Origin has the ability to make me bubble over with joy and to brutally crush me with sorrow. Which is entirely silly and irrational and does not speak well of my capacity for adult human cerebral function, but it does speak well of rugby league administrators’ skills in creating something that, no matter how artificial and manufactured the hype, and no matter the quality of the actual games in question, can make a person like me feel such tumultuous emotions.
Zac Lomax of the Blues celebrates after scoring a try during game one of the Men’s State of Origin series between Queensland Maroons and New South Wales Blues at Suncorp Stadium on May 28, 2025 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
Why can’t I feel that way about NSW playing Queensland in Super Rugby? Well, quite simply because Super Rugby is not a competition that, for me anyway, is about rugby teams vying for supremacy. Super Rugby is about two things: seeing whether Australia is better than New Zealand (which it never is), and seeing which players should be picked for their national teams.
This means that when an Australian team plays a New Zealand team, I can get excited, and really care about the result, because those games are directly relevant to point one – it’s like a lesser but still important edition of the Bledisloe Cup. But when Australian teams play other Australian teams, the major point of interest is in which players play well, who looks ready for Test rugby, and whether either or both sides look capable of beating a NZ team when one of those important matches roll around. And when a Kiwi team plays another Kiwi team? Well… shrug. I’m sure the fault lies with me, but… shrug.
Again, I know that my feelings aren’t shared universally, but it is a strange thing to love a game but not really care about the results. The most successful sporting competitions in the world are always based less on how high the quality of play is than how much people care about the teams. Being elite is a big help, especially in marketing terms, but what keeps people coming along to the games, tuning in to the broadcasts and buying subscriptions, is the simple fact that when they watch a game, they are desperately anxious because they know one result will uplift and the other will devastate. Many may find this anxiety rise within them when the Chiefs play the Crusaders or the Brumbies play the Force. I find myself depressingly serene.
I don’t know what the solution is, although I do know that many have been proposed, and many more will be, and they will all be undoubted genius. Obviously, one of the solutions will be that I am an idiot, and if I can’t see the inherent beauty of Super Rugby as a supreme struggle between fierce, proud bands of warriors who would die for their jerseys, that’s just my congenital imbecility talking. And that is entirely fair.
But I still worry, though. And I do still think it’d be nice to have a rugby competition to watch, outside the international games, where I could summon up any kind of feeling about individual teams for their own sake, and not just as pointers to the next level up.
Still, I guess I’ll watch the final between New Zealand Team Number One and New Zealand Team Number Two. Should be a good game, probably.
