I think this year's TT was cobbled together very quickly, under difficult circumstances, and therefore was extremely flawed. The lack of a break between the domestic finals and when this comp started, the uneven number of home games and the lack of intra-conference matches were all problematic. I am extremely hopeful that should Rugby Australia and NZ Rugby decide to work together again in 2022, that next year's competition will be much more well planned and enjoyable for fans on both side of the Tasman to watch. In saying that I really enjoyed this year's comp. Watching NZ teams playing against other NZ teams is boring, I enjoyed watching the Australian teams play.
Completely agree on all points.
Another reason I'm hoping for this potential 12 team full trans-tasman competition is having 6 games being played in the weekend rather than having just 2, which is the unsustainable reality of the isolated Aotearoa and AU comps.
If you're only able to play 2 games per weekend (rather than 6) that means 3x as much time is taken up rugby calendar due to a longer and less efficient competition. Who wants to see another slow AU + NZ comp chewing-up valuable time in the rugby calendar at the expense of less room in the calendar for actual test matches & no room for any potential cross-hemisphere/world-club championship type matches that are only beneficial to the game in the long-term?
The Aussies on here don't seem to get it.. the individual franchises need a
minimum of 6 home matches just to make end's meet. To put it into perspective, Super Rugby went from 18 matches per team before Covid to just 8 - that's only 4 home matches a year!