Rugby in the Southern hemisphere this week launched the new format for the Super 15 tournament which encompasses South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The new format of the fixtures sees the teams play in a conference system. They will be split into three conferences that will see them play each team in their conference home and away, these games will be supplemented by some inter conference matches, before entering a finals campaign.
What this means of course is that the champion at the end of the season will have won the title without playing every team, which makes us ask the question can you therefore possibly be crowned Champion? However it is a format that works in World Cups, so they probably can.
Obviously this new format will ease the cost on clubs travelling between the three participating nations with the addition of the third team. It also eases the pain on the New Zealand and South African teams who had to spend longer periods away from home than their Australian counterparts; both of these nations taking in two countries when they went on the road in a lot of cases while the Australians often came home in between.
All sounds good, but what about the logo? We have to say that we really do not like it. It is a very simple design and looks more like a dollar sign than anything to do with Rugby, and many may say that the logo does reflect the professional era, but it is far from inspiring, hopefully in time it may be changed as it really does not encapsulate the greatest club rugby tournament in the World.
What do you think of it?
