All Blacks and Wallabies in trouble after SA’s Super Rugby exit

The All Blacks and Wallabies seem to be suffering from the withdrawal of the South African sides from Super Rugby, with their efforts so far at the World Cup in France indicating that they are on a downward trend in the rugby world.

Following South Africa’s exit from Super Rugby a few years ago the strongest franchise team went on to find a wonderful new home in the United Rugby Championship and these teams look to be going from strength to strength.

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But Down Under the New Zealand and Australian franchises have been missing out on the strength and physicality of facing the South African teams as the Pacific Island sides that replaced them have not been up to scratch.

New Zealand, in particular, have suffered as the Australian franchises have largely been in very poor form, leading to little competition for their major teams, other than against each other.

Covid pandemic

In 2020 New Zealand only played in a local competition due to the Covid pandemic, while in 2021 New Zealand and Australia played in separate competitions before joining together for Super Rugby Trans-Tasman.

It was completely dominated by New Zealand sides with them taking the top five places on the log, while the Aussies sides all finished in the bottom half.

In 2022 Super Rugby Pacific finally got underway with Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika joining the competition.

However, the two seasons so far have again been dominated by New Zealand teams with the top three places on the log each season being held by them, while the Brumbies have finished fourth on both occasions.

This now seems to have filtered into the All Blacks and Wallabies teams with them both struggling on the world stage.

Although the All Blacks have still managed to win the last three Rugby Championship tournaments they have not been the same side that dominated world rugby for so long.

Disastrous run

They lost a first ever home series against Ireland in 2022 and went on a disastrous run of five losses in six games from the end of 2021 to middle of 2022.

Although they bounced back with 10 wins and a draw from their next 11 games, that was snapped by a record 35-7 loss against the Springboks at Twickenham a few weeks ago and they followed that up by losing their first ever pool match at the World Cup against France.

The Wallabies have been in complete freefall over the past few years and are currently ranked 10^th in the world, they suffered a shock defeat against Fiji, a record loss against Wales and are set to miss out on progressing from the World Cup pool stage for the first time in their history.

It will be interesting to see if New Zealand and Australian rugby will be able to reverse these downward trends, or if things will continue to go from bad to worse.