Global season has no chance

FORMER New Zealand rugby boss David Moffett believes the concept of a global season is dead in the water and also cautions that Super Rugby is heading for oblivion in five years unless common sense prevails.

Moffett offered typically forthright views on the future of professional rugby in an interview on Radio Sport, and paints a dim picture for a sport with a laundry list of issues.

The highly respected former chief of both New Zealand and Welsh rugby, and before that the NRL in Australia, said it was now clear that the concept of a global season had no legs after it hit a predictable stumbling block in England.

Rugby Football Union boss Sir Ian Ritchie recently indicated the English game had no intention of supporting, a date shift for either the Six Nations or the November internationals to fit into a proposed global season.

‘‘As far as we’re concerned we have a great TV deal and we have stadia that are filled for every game. Why would you want to change something that works really well?’’ he said in regard to a mooted move for the Six Nations into a later slot.

He also took a similar attitude to the current November test window when southern sides headed north.

That is despite New Zealand Rugby boss Steve Tew warning he is prepared to remove the All Blacks from the international schedule post-2019 (when the current agreement ends) unless a new global season was agreed.

But Moffett told Radio Sport he had never seen a meaningful explanation of what the so-called ‘‘global season’’ was, and that right now it looked ‘‘unachievable’’.

Moffett felt the game had more problems on its hands than trying to conjure a global season, starting with coming up with a much more sensible and fanfriendly Super Rugby competition.

‘‘I give this current format five years and it’ll be dead,’’ he told the radio station. ‘‘I understand they want the money, but they’ve gone for quantity rather than quality, and people are not idiots, they’re not watching it, they don’t understand it and can’t follow it.’’

Moffett said he’d been told by Australian union boss Bill Pulver that the hope was to grow the competition to 24 teams by expanding into the North American market.

‘‘[That] is just ridiculous,’’ he added. ‘‘Less is more. I’m sure if you went back to a reasonably sized competition that people understood the fans would come back.

‘‘But at the moment both on television and at the games fans are deserting it and that tells you an awful lot.’’