Is the 2025 Super Rugby six-team finals format actually any good?

By Cameron McMillan & Alex Powell

Argument for:
Six is fewer than eight so they’re tracking in the right direction.

This season, under the new format, it would have meant the top-seeded Hurricanes playing the 6-8 Highlanders in the quarters. Still seems a little weird a team with a losing record making the playoffs but an improvement and potentially avoids the chances of the 20-plus margins we saw in all the opening-round playoff games this year.

The question is why not top four? Four might make more sense but Super Rugby organisers need to keep it interesting the last two weeks of the regular season. With one round to go this year, four teams were battling for the eighth playoff spot. Only one team was out of the running.

If it was top four, then the spots would have been decided already. With two rounds to go, the Chiefs were nine points clear of second. Leaving the final two rounds pretty much meaningless.

I’m also keen on the narrative the ‘lucky loser’ format brings. Think of the storylines if a team lose their first knockout game but don’t actually get knocked out. Then they head into the semifinals coming off a defeat, facing a game on the road.

No one will expect them to win. Or it opens up the opportunity for the top seed to rest their players and throw away their quarter-final. Imagine if they went on to win the title after doing that?

People would at least be talking about Super Rugby.
- Cameron McMillan, NZ Herald deputy head of sport

Argument against:
If you thought an eight-team finals series for a 12-team competition was silly, this new format has done little to add to the credibility of Super Rugby.

Earlier this year, NZ Herald’s Liam Napier reported two prospective finals systems involving either a top six or top seven were on the cards.

The top six would - in theory - follow the same format as football’s A-League, where the top two teams sit out of the first week of finals and then play the two winners of teams seeded three through six.

Meanwhile, a top seven would mean the first-seeded team gets a week off, with the other six teams playing off, with three advancing to be joined by the team that sat out. That model is used in the NFL conference finals.

On paper, either one of those would have been sufficient. In reality, both have been overlooked.

What Super Rugby has implemented will see all six teams play off in one round, where the three winners advance, and a “lucky loser” advances anyway.

That means you can play 14 matches, a quarter-final, lose, and still potentially not know your own fate until after the first round of finals is finished.

And, because the highest-placed losing team’s only punishment is to drop down one seeding, it’s within the realm of possibility that the team that finishes top of the regular season is automatically guaranteed a place in the semis, regardless of results.

What’s more, given their seeding would fall from first to second, and still have a home semifinal - even if they lost in week one.

Would that leave the competition open to a rort where the top qualifier deliberately tanks the first week of finals, knowing they have a life?

It just feels ill thought out and a bit dumb.
- Alex Powell, NZ Herald digital sports editor

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission