Club concept has merit but may be a ruck too far

Based on the Club World Cup announced this week . . . can rugby crack the Club World Cup code?

A question . . .

Can rugby’s Club World Cup, likely to launch in 2028, according to reports this week, do what the ill-fated T20 Champions League in cricket and football’s Club World Cup have been unable to do and successfully bring domestic or franchise sport on to a world stage?

An observation . . .

The concept is a tempting one but as those other sports can attest, the execution is another matter.

The cricket version fell over through a lack of interest and sponsorship, as well as confusing player-qualification rules which effectively made it into an extended Indian Premier League. The football version has never really got going (they’re rebooting it for 2025 as a 32-team competition) with the likes of a regional competition in the European Champions League seen as the more prestigious trophy.

In our part of the world, it’s seen as a pre-Christmas oddity usually involving Auckland City but with little material sporting impact.

So, can rugby do what they have not?

An explanation . . .

Rugby is probably better placed to meet those headwinds than cricket and football rugby, given franchise rugby (for want of a better term) doesn’t have one competition or continent reigning supreme. Rugby teams are seen as local enough to be representative of their nation rather than the wills of a global superpower picking off the best talent the world (not that rugby is necessarily immune from that).

Sixteen teams — eight from up north, six from Super Rugby Pacific and two likely from Japan — seems about right for a Club World Cup to have some sort of merit. The June window, around when the world’s top leagues have their finals, is about as close to a perfect fit in the calendar as you’d find. League’s iteration of the World Club Challenge has always struggled for the right timing with NRL sides using it as a trial.

A suggestion . . .

There are some unanswered questions. The northern unions have decided to forego their Champions Cup knockouts that year.

Super Rugby Pacific has not indicated what its plan will be. A truncated competition that season is a possibility or — God forbid — a late-January start. It’s also possible the six teams supplied by Super Rugby may point to a change in their playoffs system down the track.

A prediction . . .

The risk is that rugby adds more matches to a calendar that doesn’t have room for more games to be shoved in — and doesn’t capture the public’s attention.

But keeping it as a quadrennial event rather than every year or two years will make it a more compelling affair and enhance the domestic competitions, as placings take on more meaning in the build-up to the World Cup.

Is Leinster v Blues or La Rochelle v Crusaders better in theory and in the mind than in reality?

While Super Rugby Pacific requires panel beating, it’s clear there is a drive for innovation and new thinking: The Nations Championship from 2026, the return of quasi-tours between New Zealand and South Africa from the same year, the introduction of the women’s British and Irish Lions and now the Club World Cup.

Work to be done but some biggerpicture thinking is happening. That alone should be applauded.