Originally Posted by
GIGS20
Done properly, conferences work really well. All the major sports in the US use them to some extent. The way SANZAAR uses them to prop up mediocre teams in unbalanced conferences is the problem.
The best way to use a conference system is to crown a champion in each conference, meaning conference games are actually important and then have an elimination series between the best teams in the conferences. Some US leagues (eg NFL) allow a wildcard entry into their playoffs, but even that is though a match between teams in different conferences. (NFL has 2 divisions of 3 conferences each so it's second in the conference playing off for a wildcard spot)
All this eliminates the hassle of having teams artificially inflated in the rankings by missing out on playing the better teams in the other conferences, they don't make the playoffs due to the fact that they have to play a team from the other conference to qualify.
If you wanted to fix conferences in SuperDuperRugby, you would rewrite the finals series to include 6 teams, the first team in each conference and the winners of a finals elimination match series where 2nd in each conference plays 3rd in another conference. That way, if New Zealand teams are as good as they say they are, they can get 3 teams in a 6 team finals series and stop whingeing.