After a period of turbulence, the 2018 Super Rugby season will be arguably the most important in the 23-year history of the competition and what happens off the field will be just as significant, if not more so, than what takes place on it.

It is a pivotal year in which Sanzaar must determine the future direction of Super Rugby, assuming the partnership between South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina survives beyond the current broadcast deal, which expires after 2020.

Like throwing ballast off a sinking ship, Rugby Australia jettisoned the Western Force last year as part of Super Rugby’s return to a 15-team format after a brief and failed experiment with an expanded 18-team competition.

But Super Rugby – and Australian rugby in particular – is still sailing in troubled waters. The new 15-strong competition it not a panacea for Super Rugby’s ills, but is keeping the patient alive until a remedy is found. It is still a confusing, multi-conference competition involving teams from five countries, crossing numerous time-zones.

The competition structure Sanzaar presents to the broadcasters will be crucial to the future of professional rugby in the southern hemisphere. It may seem like administrators have a lot of time to think about it, but they don’t. They need to start working on it now. By the end of the year there should be a clear vision about where Super Rugby is heading. It makes no sense to leave these crucial deliberations to the last minute.

The first question that needs to be answered is this: do the Sanzaar nations even want to continue their partnership? There has been speculation South Africa will head off to Europe, leaving Australia and New Zealand to create a Trans-Tasman competition.

Indications are that the partnership will persevere, but if so, in what form? Sanzaar desperately needs to create an attractive competition that will generate greater revenue streams to help the southern hemisphere nations fend off cash-rich player-poaching clubs in the northern hemisphere.

With the axing of the Force, there are now more professional Australian rugby players overseas than in Australia, while more and more All Blacks are succumbing to the lure of the Euro and the Yen. The next broadcast deal offers Sanzaar possibly their last chance to stem the player drain before southern hemisphere rugby is irreparably damaged.

The ideal solution is for Super Rugby to return to an easy-to-understand single round robin format in which every team plays every other team, but how will Sanzaar achieve that given geographical challenges and competing domestic agendas?

Irrespective of the competition structure, Sanzaar must have a quality “product” to sell to the broadcasters. What Super Rugby so badly needs is for the Australian and South African teams to be more competitive with the dominant New Zealand sides, who will more than likely provide the champion yet again this year. Australian teams did not win a single game against Kiwi opposition last year, resulting in a decreased interest in the competition in this country. 

Theoretically, the axing of the Force should strengthen the remaining four Australian teams – the Brumbies, Melbourne Rebels, NSW Waratahs and Queensland Reds. The Rebels, in particular, should be significantly improved, having secured most of the ex-Force players, including Wallabies second-rower Adam Coleman, and their highly regarded coach Dave Wessels.

The South African-born Wessels is in the vanguard of a new generation of Australian Super Rugby coaches. It is quite incredible to consider that Waratahs coach Daryl Gibson, entering his third season as head coach, is the most experienced of Australia’s Super Rugby coaches.

Wessels has had only one full year as a head coach with the Force, while Brad Thorn (Queensland Reds) and Dan McKellar (Brumbies) are in their first seasons.

Their collective inexperience may be something of a disadvantage, but hopefully these young coaches – and you can add new Waratahs assistant coach Simon Cron to this collection – will have the drive and ambition to take Australian rugby to a good place.

Strong and vibrant Australian teams are vital not just to the success of the Wallabies and the game in general in this country, but to the future of Super Rugby no matter what the configuration of the competition.