Australia's Super Rugby teams sitting pretty at top of ladder, but NZ challenge looms large

This weekend's ninth week of Super Rugby Pacific marks an important point in the overall season — the last of the border-enforced local derbies on both sides of the Tasman before the competition moves into the «crossover» phase over the remaining six rounds.

When the 2022 Super Rugby Pacific season was first announced last year, the draw had Australian teams facing New Zealand teams at the outset, with the expectation being that the paused trans-Tasman travel bubble would resume by the time the competition started in February.

But the explosion of the Delta variant of COVID-19 in the second half of 2021 and the arrival and rapid transmission of the Omicron variant put those plans on hold, forcing Rugby Australia and New Zealand Rugby into a major revision of the draw.

That revision would see all 12 teams playing eight games within their own borders to start the season.

The Fijian Drua based themselves in Australia from late October and were factored into the Australian derby games, just as the south Auckland-based Moana Pasifika were drawn as a sixth New Zealand team.

As it happened, games were postponed in New Zealand over the first five rounds as COVID19 impacted most, if not all, squads in some shape or form.

No games have been postponed in the past three weeks, however, and remarkably, when the Crusaders and Blues play their rescheduled round 5 game this Friday night in Christchurch, all the postponed games will have been made up.

Only a month ago, there were plenty of players, coaches, and commentators alike wondering how and when these games could possibly be squeezed in.

After this weekend's round 9, the competition becomes an open slather, with Australian teams facing opposition from the other side of the ditch and