At the start of every footy season fans just want to know one thing: that their team has a good shot at making the playoffs and a genuine chance of winning the title.
Sadly, throughout the history of the Super Rugby competition, that hasn’t been the case. One team has been so dominant, it has turned fans away in their droves.
In 28 seasons of "Super" Rugby, the Crusaders have won 14 titles and finished runner-up four times. The other New Zealand franchises combined have only won eight titles.
The Crusaders are an impressive sporting organisation. They have five fulltime staff who work on talent identification and recruitment and offer the most compelling reason to shift to Christchurch in New Zealand sport: "We believe you’re good enough to become an All Black."
The Crusaders have developed a winning machine. They are able to use the teams in their catchment, such as Canterbury and Tasman, to develop talent in the National Provincial Championship, which ensures there is a constant stream of quality players at their disposal.
But the Crusaders’ success has come at a cost. Their own fans have become complacent and in recent years often only pay to attend matches at the pointy end of the season, knowing their team will almost always qualify.
Fans in other parts of the country, disillusioned by the thought of the same team winning every year, have found other sports to follow. American sports, which spread talent via a draft system, and the NRL, which spreads talent via a salary cap, have increased in popularity.
People like to follow winning teams.
The Crusaders’ dynasty hasn’t helped the All Blacks. Since 2017, the Crusaders have won seven titles, while the All Blacks have conceded the most points in their history (47 against Australia), lost to Argentina four times, lost a home series to Ireland for the first time and lost to South Africa by a record margin.
Most tellingly, the All Blacks have never won a Rugby World Cup in the same year as the Crusaders have won Super Rugby.
In 2015, the 20th year of the Super Rugby competition, the Highlanders won their one and only title. They were fortunate enough to bring together a group of players at the same time who had been rejected by the other franchises but turned out to be pretty good. That won’t happen again.
The new stadium in Christchurch will bring capacity crowds, more match-day revenue and higher levels of sponsorship. The huge gap that now exists between the Crusaders and the Highlanders — 14 titles to one — will become an uncrossable divide.
Unless New Zealand Rugby intervenes to spread talent evenly across the five Kiwi franchises, the Highlanders face a bleak future.
In recent years, the Highlanders have struggled to beat the other New Zealand sides because the team is largely made up of players rejected by those teams.
Moana Pasifika may not be the last team to disappear from Super Rugby. If the Highlanders struggle even more than they do now to compete with the Blues, the Chiefs, the Hurricanes and the Crusaders, crowd numbers will drop, match-day revenue will swiftly decline and advertising revenue will shrink.
The white elephant that is Forsyth Barr Stadium will fall silent.
Since 1996, when Super Rugby began, 12 different teams have won the National Rugby League competition in Australia, but no-one has won it more than five times.
Outstanding organisations can still taste the glory of success on a regular basis, but because player talent is spread across every team, there are more high-quality teams and a more interesting competition.
New Zealand rugby fans have turned away from Super Rugby in their droves in recent years and the monotonous success of the Crusaders is to blame. Administrators need to change this before the competition becomes super meaningless.
• Randal Scott is a Dunedin sports enthusiast.
