Marshall slags not so Super Rugby

[jargan83]

http://www.rugby365.com/tournaments/...ews/500161.htm

Marshall slags not so Super Rugby

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:56


Man of the moment: Justin Marshall

Legendary All Black No.9 Justin Marshall, now playing for Welsh club the Ospreys, reckons the Super 14 is stale in comparison to European competitions.

Marshall said players from the Southern Hemisphere weren't going there for the money, but rather for the excitement of Northern Hemisphere rugby.

Writing in The Observer, Marshall explains that the Heineken Cup, which reaches the quarterfinal stage this weekend with Ospreys travelling to Saracens, is where it's at.

Super Rugby, according to the former Crusader, is a bore by comparison.

"The first thing I liked about [the Heineken Cup] was the was the way the pools were just drawn," the scrumhalf wrote in his column.

"Who you got was purely down to luck, which offered a great deal of excitement and something different for the players.

"I loved that sheer excitement of finding out who you were going to get each year [A seeding system is to be introduced next season].

"The buzz of our quarterfinal at Saracens on Sunday is something I cannot wait for," he added.

It is this buzz and variety that Marshall says gives the Heineken Cup the edge over Super Rugby.

"This is a far superior competition - it is much tougher and it offers up the variety that is terribly missing in the Super 14," he wrote.

"There, you have the same teams and the same players.

"One year you'll be playing at the Bulls and the next you'll have the Bulls at home, but that's about as far as the variety goes.

"If you play 10 years of that as I did it get tedious.

"That is what pushed me away - I just got stale.

"It is a serious problem for the Southern Hemisphere teams, and it extends to the Tri-Nations, where the same players pull on different coloured jerseys and do it all over again.

"That is why viewing figures and attendances are dropping - it is basically New Zealand, Australia and South Africa playing each other for six months of the year, and after a bucket-load of that, people are turning off their televisions," he added.

Marshall his clearly loving it in Wales and is predicting his adopted country to lift the William Webb Ellis trophy in 2011.

[no.8]

And the relevance of this thread is?

[jargan83]

to show that Marshall is still a w**ker

[GIGS20]

Who apparently with over ten years ov international experience has still managed to learn nothing about rugby!

[James]

I don't know maybe he has a point. I mean its only the third season for us and its still a new and exciting competition which we are doing pretty well in. For some teams its been 12 years of the same old format and for some teams at least 10 of those years have been spent in the lower reaches of the competition struggling to make any form of significant ground on their opposition. Don't get me know though Marshall is still a pansy.

I'd like to see the Super 14 stay but have another Heineken cup-like competition put into place. 4 pools of 4 teams- 4 from Oz, 4 from NZ (merge the highlanders and chiefs maybe?) and 4 from SA (merge the Lions and Cheetahs again) plus Japan, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Or get some Argentinian teams and base them in somewhere like Melbourne to reduce travel times. From there run it like the World Cup. A tournament like that would only take what 6 weeks? You could do that instead of the PNC. If they had it when the Tri-Nations were on it would level out a lot of the teams and give us a chance to develop younger talent.

[GIGS20]

Any lack of interst regards format is more than made up for by the competitiveness o f the rugby....I believe it really is a competition where any team can win on their day and the quality of the play is of a fantastic standard!

I'd be happy to see a format change where teams play more rugby, or the variety of opponents is increased, but not at the expense of the quality of play. Such an expense would come if (say) the number of teams were doubled so that the split it's roster down the middle and campaigned two teams in a more varied comp.

[tic]

what a strange article? He completely ignores the punishing travel schedule of SANZAR teams, and the fact that this, in itself, requires a whole set of skills to counter-balance.

I personally think the idea of a pool being drawn from a hat is ludicrous. You could have 3 or four weak teams in one pool, and by definition, one of them must advance to the pointy end of the competition.

A good way to promote mediocrity.

[hopep]

A good way to promote mediocrity.

Aahhh, TIC - I think youv'e nailed Englush Rugby in one phrase.

[AndyS]

I personally think the idea of a pool being drawn from a hat is ludicrous. You could have 3 or four weak teams in one pool, and by definition, one of them must advance to the pointy end of the competition.

Which is exactly why they are not doing it from now on, moving to seed the teams instead.

[GIGS20]

A good way to promote mediocrity.

tic English teams don't promote mediocrity, they celebrate it!

[KenyaQuin]

This coming from someone who hang around for 10 years. If you play anything for 10 years it can be expected that at some point it will become tedious, give me a break. In any case, Marshall only left once he recognised his time was up with the ABs and to seize that small window of opportunity to boost his super..little or nothing to do with the "amazing competition" up North.

[mattm]

who really cares what they think in the north? Overall we still produce the better teams in our part of the world.