ANDY COLQUHOUN, Cape Town | Wednesday 3.00pm.
THE highly successful southern hemisphere Super 12 competition is unlikely to be expanded to include more teams, Rian Oberholzer, chief executive of the South African Rugby Football Union, said on Tuesday.
The Sanzar unions (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) discussed the possibility in Dublin on Monday in advance of an International Rugby Board meeting.
”I’m not optimistic,” said Oberholzer. ”No final decision has been taken but an expansion looks unlikely.”
The unions discussed adding a fourth Australian team and a fifth South African side to the competition, taking the tournament to either 13 or 14 teams.
The present competition is made up of five New Zealand teams, four from South Africa and three from Australia.
World champions Australia have been pushing hard for a fourth franchise to capitalise on the current popularity of the game. The team will be sited in either Melbourne or Perth.
South Africa want a fifth team to solve their problems of accommodating the demands of five major unions being squeezed into four franchises.
”Ourselves and Australia have been asked to prepare formal papers on how expansion would work with fixtures and schedules. But we’ll have to wait until July 7 for a final decision,” said Oberholzer.
The tournament is in its fifth year and has been dominated by New Zealand sides, the only country to provide winners.
The Auckland Blues won the inaugural 1996 version and retained the title in 1997. They were beaten in 1998 by the Canterbury Crusaders who retained their title in 1999. — Reuters