To weigh up the effects of little things like when the tours are, how difficult the games are immediately before and after the tours, the momentum of a good start to the season or a bad one, how much momentum is lost over the June tests, etc., is basically impossible. I like that they recognise the draw is imbalanced, but, in the 2011-2015 version of Super Rugby, this was more down to who you don't play than who you do.
Only one Australian team (the 2011 Reds) won the conference with fewer points from in-conference games than external, and only one Australian team (the 2011 Waratahs) didn't win the conference despite taking the most points from their in-conference games.
The same holds for South Africa, where only the 2014 Sharks won their conference with more external than in-conference points, and no South African team has failed to win their conference when they got the most in-conference points.
The exception is New Zealand, where only the 2013 Chiefs had more in-conference points than external, and the 2011 Blues, 2012 Crusaders, and 2014 Chiefs all had more in-conference points than the NZ conference winner.
Basically, unless you are from New Zealand, you get to the finals by winning your conference games. If you fail to do this, you might still win it if the conference leader loses their external games, and you win yours. This happened in 2011, when the Waratahs only took 2 points from their external away games, while the Reds took 13. WIth hindsight, this actually may have been due to strength of schedule, as the Waratahs home fixtures were about 30% easier than the Reds, but their away fixtures were 30% more difficult. And, of course, away fixtures are where you'll be hit hardest. This isn't to take away from how well the Reds performed in 2011, mind you.
The point is, in-conference fixtures are inherently balanced, and winning your conference is, with very few exceptions, the way to win Super Rugby. So the real strength of schedule is a measure of out-of-conference opposition. So, I'd suggest that strength of schedule be measured in the following way:
- For each team, take their home fixtures against out-of-conference opposition
- Give each of these teams a score equal to their competition points in the previous season
- Sum these scores
- Repeat the above process for the away fixtures against out-of-conference opposition
- Divide the away scores by the home scores. This is that team's strength of schedule. A higher value is a tougher schedule.
Edit: I didn't take the out-of-conference teams that each team misses during the season into consideration. I've now done this by taking the product of the Home-Away strength of schedule with the strength of these missed teams (found by dividing the average strength of each conference (i.e. the total points of the conference divided by the number of teams) by the strength of the teams that are missed). I also forgot the distorting impact of these functions, so I've re-done the scale: a value of zero is a neutral strength of schedule. A positive value is more difficult, a negative value is easier.
By this method, the strength of schedule (from hardest to easiest) for each team is as follows:
Sunwolves: 0.622
Blues: 0.462
Crusaders: 0.419
Bulls: 0.298
Waratahs: 0.200
Brumbies: 0.155
Lions: 0.117
Jaguares: -0.026
Stormers: -0.092
Chiefs: -0.116
Highlanders: -0.119
Sharks: -0.171
Reds: -0.264
Hurricanes: -0.517
Rebels: -0.689
