Super 14 for dummies: Bonus points

There comes a time in the Super-14 competition when teams start to panic realising they are at the bottom half of the table. One thing and one thing only will halt their plummet to the bottom of the log, which is the consistency of the team to score four tries per game and lose by less than 7 points in their upcoming encounters over the next 12 weeks.

We hear the mantra from the South African coaches about winning or losing to the New Zealand and Oz sides but it’s not as simple as that. It is how you win, with 4 or more tries, or how you lose, with a margin of less than 7 points. These are the subtle nuances that will catch up with the teams 3 games from now.

The 14 sides all play against one another once in the regular season. With each team granted one bye-week, this phase of the competition runs for 14 weeks with the semis and finals accounting for the last 2 weeks of the 16-week competition.

The teams are ranked according to the number of competition points they accrue throughout the 14-week season and we are now 15% into the tournament, with some sides scrambling over each other like roaches at the bottom of the log.

Competition points are awarded as follows:

Four for winning a match.

Two for drawing a match.

Additional bonus points, which set the men from the boys or the leaders from the losers, are awarded as follows:

One bonus point for scoring four or more tries in a match.

One bonus point for losing by seven or fewer points.

Teams can score up to two additional bonus points in each regular season match. One bonus point will be awarded to any team that scores four tries or more in a single game, regardless of whether they have won, lost or drawn.

A bonus point will also be awarded to the losing side if the margin of loss is 7 points or less. So only the losing side can achieve the maximum 2 bonus points. Weird ranking, but those are the rules. It is possible to lose by less than 7 points and have scored four tries and wind up with 2 points, which would be three off the side that won, also having scored 4 tries. That was nearly the situation at Loftus on Saturday, which is why the Blues are 5th on the Table and the Stormers 9th! Therein lays the tale.

The Sharks are the only Super 14 side not to have scored any bonus points after 15% of the tournament. Plumtree will surely know what to say to his team this week in Hamilton on Saturday in the team room and again at half time at Chiefs’ home ground. In the last 2 encounters with Chiefs in Hamilton, the Chiefs twice walked with a maximum of 5 points and the Sharks only got one point for the 2 games. Not a good sign.

One would have thought that Sanzar would have attributed an additional bonus point for four or more tries, as that is the spectacle of rugby and that is the grist that brings in the spectators to fill the stadiums. The spectators bring lucre to the home stadium and numbers to the broadcaster and hey presto you have a deal on the table top for the next 5 years.

Why oh why, do we not hear the South African coaches, or their management and public-relations hacks, focussing their teams and their fans on this simple solution?

The Bulls have now learned to run it seems. Instead of the crash-bang-boom up the middle and around the edges, which we normally see week in and week out from the Bulls. They now spin the ball out wide and drop little chips over the rush defence. Pieter Rossouw, their backline coach, must be broadening their repertoire because they have shown they can run and run well. What a liberating feeling it must be for the “running” of the Bulls.

Even though Habana slipped three tackles, each one resulting in a try by the Blues, the Bulls came away with a full house and are positioned number one on the Table with 10 points. What a great position to be in because they are going to need it.

This coming Saturday the Reds meet the Cheetahs in Brisbane. What the Reds did to the Stormers, by offloading with momentum and what the Blues did running the ball against the Bulls and still come away with a bonus point, is exactly what losing teams must aim for. The Blues’ loss, with a second string side, against the Bulls, resulted in a four point difference on the Table and not the massacre the South African media would have you believe from the the final score.

The fact that the New Zealand teams are ranked 5, 6, 7, 11 and 12 on the log means that they are at their most vulnerable now and their most dangerous as they face 2 South African teams — Stormers-Blues and Sharks-Chiefs — this weekend. If the Stormers get beaten by the Blues and the Sharks by the Chiefs, you will hear grown men start to sniffle.

The Bulls meet the Lions and although the Lions pipped the Bulls a couple of weeks ago in a warm-up, this will be different and deadly. The Bulls should again come away with another 5 points to increase daylight between themselves and the danger teams, Crusaders and Sharks, who are but 3 and 2 points off the Bulls.

Then to compound matters, expect in the next 2 weeks, post the Sanzar meeting on March 4 in Dubai, for there to be a revelation in Super rugby relating to the expansion of the Super 14, or will it be Super 15. If Sanzar and especially SA Rugby do not hit the right strategic formula for the future of Super rugby in March, they will be in for a torrid time.

Times, they are a changing but it is still a numbers game and the teams in this year’s Super 14 must worry about getting the bonus points to be a contender in 10 weeks. The administrators of Sanzar must seriously worry about getting bums on seats because those stadiums are half empty and the sponsors are walking away and the broadcasters raising an eyebrow.

This year could be a brutal year for rugby.