White: Scrap the play-offs
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Jake White has hit out at the idea of play-offs saying that the semifinal is tilted too much in favour of the home team in a competition where some sides have an easier draw across the season.
The structure of the tournament is clearly biased towards those teams that finish in the top two of the overall log with an automatic path to the semifinals, and a weeks break, guaranteed.
On face value, this may seem like a fair reward for top performing teams but as White has stated – there are always going to be some irregularities.
The Crusaders missed out on some of the tougher games due to the conference system, with the Waratahs and Bulls bypassing the men from Christchurch.
"Had they played those games [against the first and ninth placed teams respectively on the log] we may be playing in Durban and we'd be a firm favourites and we'd be the team that's going to win."
"SANZAR is going to have to have a long look about whether or not we should have quarterfinals and playoffs because we are wasting a lot of time, a lot of money."
White is looking to do away with the play-offs and have a proper round robin season instead.
"Smaller competition where everyone plays," White said in his opinion of how the competition should be run.
"Player welfare comes first, national teams come first but that's never going to happen when you're trying to sell 169 rugby games on TV as opposed to 55 rugby games on TV."
However, with all that being said, White has been quoted as saying it is not always going to be a simple matter of number one versus number two in the Final.
In fact, White, with the Brumbies last year and the Sharks under John Plumtree in 2012 proved that it is possible to finish outside the top two and still contest the Final.
"If we want to get to a situation where the number one team plays the number two team, we need to look at whether or not we should just scrap play-offs," White said at the end of the regular season.
"For anyone who follows the game, if it ends up that one plays two every year then we might as well can the play-offs because we are wasting everyone's time.
"I have been there with the Brumbies, we came third and ended up beating the Free State in our play-off, we then had to go and beat the Bulls and then try and beat the Chiefs in Hamilton.
"The more that happens, the better it is going to be for the competition."
The Sharks, who missed out on second spot by a mere point, travel to Christchurch after defeating the Highlanders in a quaterfinal playoff game in Durban to contest for the right to play in the Final.
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