Super Rugby Pacific 2025: Key Storylines For Every Round 1 Match
Super Rugby Pacific 2025: Key Storylines For Every Round 1 Match
Get ready for Super Rugby Pacific 2025! Here’s one key storyline for every Round 1 match as the new season kicks off with big debuts, rivalries & surprises.
Written by Briar Napier
It was a more chaotic offseason than usual in Super Rugby Pacific, which is saying something.
It all led up to what has the potential to be one of the best and most competitive seasons of club rugby in Oceania yet.
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Multiple high-profile player transfers, a revamped knockout-round bracket and the shrinking of the competition from 12 to 11 teams has only upped the standard of success even more in Super Rugby Pacific heading into next weekend’s opening round, which is all to say that there should be a lot of chaos on the horizon that kicks off in just several days.
Part of FloRugby’s extended coverage of Super Rugby Pacific from the preseason to the postseason, we’ve been prepping the site with content that’ll help you get up to speed about what’s all gone down since the end of last season’s final.
Now, all that waiting is about to end.
Here’s a look ahead at one big thing to know about every Super Rugby Pacific match in Round 1 of the 2025 season, scheduled to be aired all season long in the U.S. and Canada exclusively on FloRugby:
NOTE: The Queensland Reds are off on a bye week in Round 1.
Hurricanes at Crusaders (1:05 a.m. ET Feb. 14)
A Crusaders Comeback?: An adjustment period was to be expected for the Crusaders at the beginning of last season after Scott Robertson, the most successful coach in Super Rugby history and the architect of the club’s dominant stretch in which it won all possible silverware from 2017-23, left the club after winning the 2023 final to coach the All Blacks. But no one expected the Crusaders’ fall from grace to be so dramatic so fast. Under new coach Rob Penney, the Crusaders stunningly only won four matches from 14 and finished ninth to completely miss out on the knockout rounds, an inexcusable finish by their standards, considering the wealth of talent and title-winning experience that the club has on offer. No coach in Super Rugby enters the 2025 campaign with a hotter seat than Penney, and more mishaps won’t be tolerated for long; that’s why it’ll be vitally important for the Crusaders to get out on the right foot for 2025 right away against the Hurricanes, who topped the regular-season table a season ago and don’t plan to show any mercy on opening weekend against the most successful club in the competition’s history.
Highlanders at New South Wales Waratahs (3:35 a.m. Feb. 14)
The Sua’ali’i Effect: The headline story of Australian rugby over the past six months, Joseph Sua’ali’i will make his long-awaited Super Rugby debut for the Waratahs next weekend at what should be an electric Allianz Stadium in Sydney, eager to watch the former rugby league star make his mark in one of the world’s top rugby union competitions. If you don’t know Sua’ali’i’s story, the 21-year-old had for years been considered to be one of rugby league’s most hyped prospects ever, playing his first senior game in the National Rugby League before he turned 18 after he was granted an exemption to do so. In March 2023, however, Rugby Australia and Sua’ali’i came to terms on a blockbuster multi-million dollar seal for him to switch codes after the conclusion of the 2024 NRL season, making him both a Tah and eligible to play for the Wallabies. Sua’ali’i excelled immediately during Australia’s end-of-year tests, when he became just the third player in the professional era to debut for the Wallabies before doing so in Super Rugby, and he’ll be looking to do the same right away with the Tahs as their revamped roster looks to explode after an abysmal last-place finish last year.
Brumbies at Fijian Drua (10:35 p.m. Feb. 14)
Will the Drua Keep Rising?: One of the biggest questions coming into the 2022 Super Rugby season was on if the then-debuting Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika — representing Fiji and the Pacific Islands, respectively — could hold their own against the established Australia- and New Zealand-based clubs that have ruled Super Rugby for decades. In the Drua’s case, the answer is a resounding yes. In classic Fijian rugby fashion, mirroring the national team’s ability to punch above its weight on a big stage, the Drua have pulled off the astounding feat of making the playoffs in back-to-back seasons after two straight seventh-place finishes in the regular-season table. Making the knockout rounds this time around will be more difficult for the Drua, however, as the now 11-team league (following the Melbourne Rebels’ axing due to financial problems) has subsequently condensed the amount of playoff teams from eight to six for 2025. Other teams in the bottom half of the table, most notably Moana and the New South Wales Waratahs made huge offseason moves to try and boost their way back up the table — something the Drua is limited in doing due to having only Fiji-born players or Fijian internationals. If the Drua are indeed keeping pace with the changes around them, their result against the always-strong Brumbies next weekend will be a major tell.
Chiefs at Blues (1:05 a.m. Feb. 15)
Running Back the Final: The league’s schedule makers wasted no time on immediately giving us a heavyweight showdown between two of the favourites to win the Super Rugby Pacific title this year, giving us a highly-anticipated rematch of a final from a season ago in which the Blues ran riot. Thanks to a five-try display — including a hat-trick by Caleb Clarke — the Blues broke the longest drought between titles in league history by defeating the Chiefs 41-10 in front of over 44,000 fans at Eden Park in Auckland to capture their fourth Super Rugby championship in team history and first since 2003. It was an epic return to the top for the Blues, who only made the playoffs twice between 2003-21 and lost in the 2022 final, and they’ll be looking to usher in a new dynasty in Super Rugby following the fall of the Crusaders after their string of five straight (non-regionalized) league championships from 2017-23. Not to be outdone, however, the Chiefs are also looking to end their own league title drought — now at 12 years — and a season-opening victory away from home over the league champions is about as good of an early-season momentum boost as it gets. Watch this match if you can only see one on Super Rugby’s opening weekend.
Moana Pasifika at Western Force (3:35 a.m. Feb. 15)
Start of the Savea Era: In what was quite possibly the most stunning transfer in Super Rugby history, Ardie Savea — the 2023 World Rugby Player of the Year and an All Blacks mainstay across two Rugby World Cups — left the Hurricanes in the offseason after over a decade at the club to join Moana Pasifika, where he’ll team up with older brother Julian as by far the most accomplished player ever to play for the squad of and for Pacific Islanders since it first competed in Super Rugby in 2022. The back-rower, capped 94 times by New Zealand and still in his prime at age 31, will be Moana’s captain in his debut match with the club next weekend against the Force, who finished just above Moana in 10th in last year’s table. A leader of men like few others in the sport today, Savea has long said that his seismic move to Moana isn’t about winning titles, but setting up a strong foundation that the club can build off of for years to come as it looks to continue to represent Pasifika rugby on a huge stage. That project officially begins next weekend in Perth.
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