Latest from World Rugby on Global Calendar

[Skippy]

“If England only ever played Scotland, Wales, Ireland or France people would get bored pretty quickly & ticket sales would fall.”

That didn’t seem happen pre World Cup, when the only regular diet of international rugby was the annual 5 Nations. I don’t remember people being bored, even if some fans were fed up with dire English performances

[baldpaul101]

But how long ago was that Skippy?

There was no AIs & only a single touring team every year. Any game of rugby was worth seeing, now we have access to so much rugby both on TV and live, people's tastes have moved on.
Tickets for Italy games are cheap, I think Scotland was too, because its the only way they can sell Twickenham out.

I doubt pretty much any international games sell out in either Aus or SA, except Lions tours, England games & maybe any critical games, even in NZ crowds aren't huge.
Both sides need each other to survive, they just need to acknowledge it and come to a sensible compromise, I know its not that easy, but something has to change.

[Skippy]

Agreed. The key point for the negotiations is that the SH teams have more to lose than the NH teams, and should be advised to set their approach accordingly. It’s also worth noting that SA seams increasingly drawn to Europe, which raises the question as to how united the SH might be in any negotiation.

[Heathen]

This article from today's Times contains a tad more detail of what is being discussed. I think that Farrell needs to be reminded as to who is his primary employer.

World Rugby planning to turn autumn Test window into a ‘super league’
Owen Slot, Chief Rugby Correspondent

The new future of autumn international rugby could see the top six nations in the world disputing a biennial super league with the top two possibly then facing each other in a grand final.

This is the vision of the World Rugby working group which is now pushing for the July international window to be moved to October, so that October and November could form one long international window for this new super league to be played out.

The format allows for successive tiers of international leagues to be played out in the proposed October-November window. The Six Nations Championship would therefore remain as a stand-alone competition, though it could be used to seed its teams for the October-November series.

Under this proposal, the top three in the Six Nations would qualify for the super league; the bottom three would play in an autumn second division in a similar league, but with the next three-ranked teams from the southern hemisphere. There could then be a third division and even a fourth.

The World Rugby working group has been working on formats for a new global calendar since March. Its two favoured options both require the traditional June/July international window to be scrapped and moved instead to October so that October and November form one extended annual period for the international game. It is now clear why the working group favours the one long extended window: because it believes that it can squeeze this new competition into it.

The exact details of how the competition might work have yet to be nailed down. However, these plans are worth nothing until World Rugby and unions have persuaded the European clubs to back them.

This requires the clubs to agree to a new calendar where their season would be shifted away from its usual starting point in September, probably to December. Thus far, the French Top 14 clubs have made it clear that they do not intend to shift. The Times understands that the English Premiership clubs intend to stand by the French.

Bill Sweeney, the chief executive of the RFU who is on the World Rugby working group, told The Times that the two priorities now were to show that this format would not impinge on player welfare and to persuade the clubs that it would work for them.

The clubs have felt that they have not been adequately consulted throughout this process. Sweeney said: “We want to sit down with the clubs and say: let’s do this advanced modelling jointly. Let’s really figure it out. If it doesn’t work for the clubs then we have to accept that.”

Sweeney said that he had worked with the players and that, in principle, they were in approval. He said that he had had a long conversation with Owen Farrell, the England captain who, along with the former All Black Conrad Smith, was representing the players in the last round of negotiations.

Sweeney says that the Covid-19 pandemic has given rugby an opportunity to pause and reassess. “That is why we are saying this feels like a 1995 moment,” he said.

However, he recognises that time is running out. The working group and the unions are working towards a number of unofficial deadlines.

By the end of August, they intend to have nailed down an accepted format for the global calendar and the shape of the game to come. By early July, they need to have finalised the touring dates for the 2021 British & Irish Lions tour to South Africa. At present, that is pencilled in for next summer; however, under the new proposals, it may be moved to the October-November window.

By mid July, there also needs to be a final, agreed draft of how the 2020 season will be played out, particularly the autumn international season. Though the leading southern-hemisphere nations are still due to come on tour in Europe, Sweeney accepts that this is decreasingly likely to happen.

The coming autumn in Europe is more likely to be an eight-nation affair involving the Six Nations plus two more. One of those is likely to be Japan, the second could be South Africa, but, as Sweeney says, South Africa may be locked into their participation in the Rugby Championship.

“If they are locked up in that, they wouldn’t be able to travel,” he said. “Japan could be a candidate, Fiji would be in the same boat, you could also have a Barbarians side; people have mentioned a possible Premiership all-stars team. There are options to play with there.”

[Trevs Big Tackle]

Sounds like a good way to ensure the top 6 don't have to play any games against those pesky tier two nations that they find so inconvenient.

On a positive side, if NZ are contractually obliged to come and play, say, Wales, Ireland and England in the autumn, then those unions don't have to pay NZ's excessive monetary demands for them to turn up.

However, I suspect NZ will be attempting to negotiate a large slice of the pie...