The Breakdown | Could new Nations Championship transform Test rugby? The jury is out
There is logic to the fresh international format, due to launch next year, but glaring issues and logistical challenges tooOK, let’s just pick the ball up and run with it for a little while.A reimagined global Test landscape pitching the northern hemisphere against the south commencing next July.Twelve men’s national sides playing six games each with a final playoff weekend.Concluding with one champion team hoisting a shiny trophy aloft in front of, hopefully, a worldwide television audience of millions.On paper – and years of scribbling on the backs of envelopes have gone into this – there is some logic to it.
Instead of seemingly random Tests scattered like distant dots on someone else’s map there is at least a discernible framework,Every game will, in theory, resonate,And, by virtue of pooling everybody’s TV rights, there are hopes of a collective commercial and promotional upside that can benefit the whole sport,Er, how long can we keep this feelgood momentum going? At first glance the new “finals weekend” in London on 27-29 November looks intriguing,Let’s imagine it was taking place this autumn with South Africa set to face up-and-coming England in a winner-takes-all finale.
Would you tune in as a neutral? On the face of it there is a decent chance you would,But hang on,What’s that approaching noise? Sadly, it’s the sound of several sizeable “buts”,Because the more you start digging into the precise details, hidden costs and crazier aspects of the new Nations Championship concept, the more you start to think that sticking with the imperfect old touring model would have been significantly simpler,Take the competing nations for starters.
You would assume – wouldn’t you? – that the top dozen teams would have been picked on merit.Instead we have Wales sitting around the table while Georgia, one place above them in the World Rugby rankings, are not.OK, but surely promotion and relegation will swiftly iron out that kind of injustice? Sorry, what’s that? There is talk of promotion and relegation but not quite yet? And not yet a concrete date for its introduction? Hmm.Then there are the obvious geographical oddities.Japan are classified as a “southern hemisphere” team despite being 4,000km north of the equator.
And what’s this? Fiji are to play England in South Africa next July.So all that marketing blurb about home and away games is not quite what it seems.And England still won’t be sighted in Suva any time soon.So much for the old-school touring rhythms.Instead we have a series of hasty, logistically complicated business trips.
England are slated to play the Springboks in Johannesburg and the Pumas in Buenos Aires next July but will sample fewer of the rich natural wonders of Africa and South America than if they visited London Zoo,And talking of elephants etc, there is also no avoiding the even bigger issue in the corner of the dressing room,Anointing a Nations Championship winner every two years might sound desirable in the era of shorter attention spans but what about the knock-on effects for the supposedly pre-eminent World Cup? Some will say it is similar to the world championships and Olympic Games in athletics but the last thing rugby union’s battered finances need is any dilution of the World Cup as its commercial pinnacle,We haven’t even yet touched on the long-term environmental message that will be sent by requiring the world’s leading rugby stars to spend even more time on long-haul flights,Nor the potential performance and player welfare implications of fronting up on different continents on successive weekends in wildly fluctuating conditions.
International coaches with whom I’ve discussed the format are not exactly punching the air with delight.There is also the potential impact on attendances in, say, Wales, if people are suddenly being charged top whack for what is now essentially a dead rubber rather than something with its own unique time-honoured flavour.And that’s even before the finals weekend disappears off to places where barely anyone locally gives a stuff.Sign up to The BreakdownThe latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewedafter newsletter promotionHow many South Africa supporters will rock up to, say, Doha in 2028 or New York in 2030 if the Boks are still first among equals? What will neutral venues and casual fans do for the crackle of expectancy that, for example, pervaded south-west London before the All Blacks’ visit on Saturday? And whose bright idea was it to launch this bold new venture at precisely the moment Fifa’s football World Cup will be rising to the boil next July?In short, will it really be a gamechanger? As the British & Irish Lions underlined in Australia there is an unbeatable ebb and flow to a best-of-three series between two well-matched sides.You just don’t get the same richness of narrative at Test level or the same prolonged competitive edge, unless you strike very lucky with your grand final.
Admittedly cricket was blessed this year with an absorbing final between Australia and South Africa at Lord’s,But what if it had rained throughout,And let’s not lose sight of the wider picture,If someone had seriously proposed an itinerary requiring England to play a single Ashes Test in Perth this week before heading away to New Zealand and then the West Indies for further one-off Tests in subsequent weeks they would have been laughed out of the pub,Some hugely successful initiatives, in fairness, have ended up wrongfooting the initially sceptical majority.
We also continue to await details of the venues and kick-off times, let alone a title sponsor, the points system or the finer print of the second-tier Nations Cup.Tom Harrison, the Six Nations chief executive, says the enterprise “has the power to redefine the future of rugby”.Let’s all pray he is right.This is an extract taken from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown.To sign up, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
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