Super Rugby: Team of Round 5

As you will all know, this week's Super Rugby round was overshadowed by a situation that is of far greater importance than sport and Superbru. The cancelled fixture between the Highlanders and the Crusaders was an understandable consequence of a tragic circumstance and whilst the effect on our fantasy game is relatively insignificant in this context, here’s a quick explanation of why this round has been finalised as normal with Highlanders and Crusaders players scoring 0 points. The usual look at this week's top performers will follow.

Many of you have been getting in touch to question how we'll be dealing with this fixture cancellation and the simple answer is that nothing will change. We know this may feel harsh, and we completely understand the impact, but there is no solution which does not have knock-on effects elsewhere (see more below). This decision also falls in line with the approach we took in our European Champions Cup fantasy game in 2016 when a Munster match was abandoned following the passing of Anthony Foley.

Fundamentally what has happened here is that some players who were expected to play did not play. Superbru has a mechanism to handle this, because from time to time, players who are picked don't take to the field. Sometimes a player pulls a hamstring in the warm-up, or a couple of guys can't play due to food poisoning. The game mechanism for dealing with this is the bench, which can afford you some recompense if your reserve plays (and yes, the bench doubles as a squad management tool, but it is partly there to cater for no-play events).

When you get down to it, on a per-player, individual basis, is there a difference between this weekend's situation and a player pulling his hamstring while running onto the field? The only real difference is in scale - 9 of every 10 brus had at least one Highlander or Crusader in their XV.

Are there any fair solutions to solve the problem at scale?

We've been communicating with lots of you throughout the weekend about this situation and two suggested approaches have come up more than once - award an 'average' number of points to those that were expected to have started in the HIG v CRU fixture or, simply cancel Round 5. Here's why we have opted against doing either of those things.

Average points idea: There is obviously no way of telling how this match would have played out and it therefore seems unfair to award artificial points. Doing this would prevent brus from receiving a higher number of points from a substitute in some cases and is certainly unfair on brus who have selected a player that did feature in this round but end up scoring less than a Crusader or Highlander who never actually played. The General picked Maddocks on the wing as he’s had a strong season, but he ended up scoring just 2.5 points. How fair would it feel if someone else in his pool had George Bridge and scored 5 points, when Bridge didn’t even play?

Round cancellation idea: This feels like a very extreme solution and another option that does not solve the problem without creating a sense of injustice elsewhere. 5 of the 6 scheduled games did take place and points have been awarded for those performances - cancelling the whole round could be deemed unfair by those people that made shrewd selections in other matches.

The overall point here is that the disruption that has been caused by this fixture cancellation - which is nobody's fault - can only be 'fixed' by creating knock-on effects that cause more disruption. Disruption that would be less fair as we actually have a choice in the matter.

Here is this week's best possible Super Rugby fantasy team along with some stats on how this round went for the Superbru community:



Most represented teams in this week's TOTR: Lions (4 players), Hurricanes (3 players).

This week's ideal captain was Wes Goosen who as you can see is a player that you are able to capitalise on when starting/out of position. With Ben Lam rested, Goosen (who can play in midfield or on the wing) started at 11 and picked up some serious ball carry points against the Chiefs. Another notable inclusion in this TOTR for a similar reason is Damien McKenzie who has returned to 15 after beginning this season at Fly Half. Both McKenzie and the Chiefs as a team looked far more dangerous following this positional change.

In terms of the Forwards, Kwagga Smith makes this TOTR once again as he continues his great start to the campaign while his teammate and heavily selected Hooker Malcolm Marx also makes the XV thanks to his performance in that fantastic Lions comeback victory over the Rebels.

Moving on to look at the best score actually managed in this tricky week at Superbru and this week's best performing player in the whole of our SR fantasy game was Dirk Van Schalkwyk from South Africa! Dirk managed 224 points in Round 5 with Barrett and Franks the Crusaders players he had auto-subbed:



As you can see in the above graphic, Dirk selected 4 of the TOTR players and made Goosen his captain!

In our daily Super Rugby fantasy game - a different kind of test as you select five players you believe will perform best on each day of the Super Rugby season from lists we provide - the best possible selections were as follows:

Friday: Faingaa, Hooper, Lienert-Brown, Rona, D. McKenzie (88 points)
Saturday: Marx, Smith, Meakes, Coetzee, Stewart (103 points)

We hope you can understand the above. Thank you for taking the time to read through this (longer than usual) round-up and we look forward to Round 6!