a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wP0pQmqvDko/TV1DRspwYFI/AAAAAAAAFCE/cZdKGx5PPy0/s1600/superrugby-launch.jpg"img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 350px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wP0pQmqvDko/TV1DRspwYFI/AAAAAAAAFCE/cZdKGx5PPy0/s400/superrugby-launch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574685885077676114" border="0" //aspan style="font-weight: bold;"As you will realise, Super Rugby kicks off tomorrow in New Zealand with the first game of the tournament featuring the Hurricanes and the Highlanders. This year the tournament is expanded to 15, and has a slightly different format to before. /spanbr /br /This video, fairly similar to one that was posted a few months back, talks you through how the tournament came to be, from its humble beginnings as the Super 10 some time back. Since then we’ve seen it change its face many times.br /br /Super 10, Super 12, Super 14, and now Super Rugby, the thing that hasn’t changed is the standard of play, entertainment value, and quality on show. It’s something every true rugby fan should be part of. While the tournament has had its critics, mainly coming from up North, it comprises the top three in world rugby and has been the pace setter for many years now.br /br /There are obviously a few reasons for that, weather conditions being one, but attitude, ingenuity, and depth of talent are another. Comparisons to Heineken Cup rugby have always existed, but there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t enjoy both, as they each bring something unique to the table.br /br /There’s also a new side this year, the Melbourne Rebels, which should make things interesting, especially as there’s a former England star flyhalf playing for them in the form of Danny Cipriani, amongst other former Test players.br /br /You can download the official fixture list (.pdf) via the website a href="http://www.superrugby.com/SRp006-007a_draw.pdf" target="_blank"here/a.br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"The following is an interactive, clickable video, using the same technology as the a href="http://rugbydump.blogspot.com/2010/06/james-oconnor-living-up-to-his-billing.html"James O'Connor video/a we posted last year. You can mouse over and click when prompted for more info, or just move your mouse off and watch it like normal./spanbr /br /centerobject classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" height="288" width="400" param name="movie" value="http://cclickvidservgs.com/001/cclickPlayer.swf"param name="quality" value="high"param name="bgcolor" value="#2c3030"param name="wmode" value="transparent"param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="FlashVars" value="xmlpath=http://cclickvidservgs.com/vidid/australian_rugby_sanzar/xml/cclick_config2.xml"embed src="http://cclickvidservgs.com/001/cclickPlayer.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" bgcolor="#2c3030" flashvars="xmlpath=http://cclickvidservgs.com/vidid/australian_rugby_sanzar/xml/cclick_config2.xml" height="288" width="400"/embed!-- end opening embed tag --noembedamp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;h1amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Australian Rugby Sanzar amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/h1amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;pamp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Australian Rugby Sanzaramp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/pamp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;/noembed/object/centerbr /span style="font-size:85%;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Time: /span02:24/spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"http://www.rugbydump.comimg width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/32316390-3823499013765588614?l=rugbydump.blogspot.com' alt='' //divpa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kcltyaH1Lg6W3kqp1T2svP2p6no/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kcltyaH1Lg6W3kqp1T2svP2p6no/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kcltyaH1Lg6W3kqp1T2svP2p6no/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/kcltyaH1Lg6W3kqp1T2svP2p6no/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare"a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?a=pXWqINXNKi4:VlIViMmHW5g:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/rugbydump?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rugbydump/~4/pXWqINXNKi4" height="1" width="1"/ More...