One of world’s best referees, Angus Gardner, believes that Super Rugby Pacific is showing the way forward for how the game should be played and officiated.
The Australian has taken charge of some of the biggest games in the sport but his bread and butter is the annual southern hemisphere franchise competition.
Super Rugby have been the biggest innovators when it comes to trialling laws having vowed to make the game more ‘fan-centric’ and Gardner, who is implementing these new guidelines, reckons they are achieving their aims.
Super Rugby ‘creating more flow’
“One of the perennial points that we always come back to is that tension between balance and flow. One of the things that Super Rugby has really tried to promote in its product is the flow piece,” he told the Rugby Unity podcast.
“If we look at a lot of the innovations that Super Rugby has put in over the last two seasons, it’s to create more opportunities for flow.
“Playing on for minor injuries, changing the 50/22 law, the free-kick at the box-kick if they join afterwards, so we’re actually looking for opportunities to get the game back up and operational rather than necessarily going to a scrum.”
Critics have claimed that the southern hemisphere is attempting to depower the scrum and these 2026 trials have taken away that set-piece option following certain infringements.
However, Gardner believes that the changes over the past few years have improved the product of Super Rugby.
“I know for rugby purists that might be at odds with how they see the game but one of the things that we’ve been asked to do as referees in Super Rugby is really buy into the product of looking for reasons to keep the game going, looking for opportunities to award tries and looking to reward game momentum,” he said.
“For Super Rugby, it’s a product and teams, players, coaches and referees have all bought into that product.”
World Rugby confirm ‘universal agreement’ over law changes following Shape of the Game summit
World Rugby divide
Whether they can convince the other nations and World Rugby to head in that direction remains to be seen, particularly after it was reported that South Africa and France joined forces at the Shape of the Game conference in February.
Those two nations are looking to protect the fundamentals of the sport, which includes the scrum, in contrast to Australia and New Zealand, who want to depower it further.
No new laws will therefore be trialled this year after the French and South Africans remained firm following pressure from the trans-Tasman duo.
“The challenge at international level is because there are so many different countries involved at the World Rugby level, how do you achieve greater alignment around the clarity and the tension between accuracy versus flow? I think that’s a real challenge at international level,” Gardner added.