Premiership welcomes season shake-up
Test windows now in July and November Six Nations to be cut from seven to six weeks
The historic agreement over the new global season after 2019 means the English game will experience “the biggest change to domestic club rugby since the inception of the Premiership”, it was claimed last night.
The Daily Telegraph exclusively revealed on Wednesday that World Rugby had agreed a new framework for the global calendar following the World Cup in Japan, including switching the June international window to July and bringing the November window forward by one week.
World Rugby yesterday confirmed those details, which will also bring a 39 per cent increase in the number of Tests between tier one and tier two nations, including the prospect of England touring the Pacific Islands for the first time.
It is also understood that the Six Nations Championship will not move from its February and March slot but will be reduced from seven to six weeks by removing one of the fallow weekends, although this has yet to be formally ratified ahead of the World Rugby Council meeting in May.
Future Lions tours after this summer’s tour to New Zealand are also to be reduced from 10 to eight weeks – following the global season discussions in San Francisco in January – as revealed by The Telegraph last month.
The new agreement, which will begin in the 2019/2020 season and run to 2032, will also lead to a major overhaul of England’s domestic season, with Mark McCafferty, the Premiership Rugby chief executive, hailing it as the biggest change to the club game since the Premiership was established in 1997.
McCafferty revealed that the new international window in July, when the home unions tour the southern hemisphere, will enable the Premiership final, which is normally held in the last weekend in May, to move to the last weekend in June – with a two-week rest period before England play their first tour match.
Premiership Rugby, however, intends to retain the traditional start to its tournament on the first weekend of September and the new nine-month domestic season will ensure that the league will no longer overlap with either England’s November Test series or the Six Nations.
That will ensure that England’s top internationals will be able to feature more often for their club sides in the Premiership, although the number of games they will be allowed to play will not change from the limit of 32 as agreed between the Rugby Football Union and the clubs.
It is also likely to lead to more games being played in more clement weather, with 15 club matches, including the knockout stages of the Champions and Challenge Cups, to be played after the end of the Six Nations in March.
“This is the biggest change to English club rugby since the inception of the Premiership,” said McCafferty. “It gives us the ability now to reduce the overlaps significantly from 2020 onwards to give the clubs more ability to manage and grow their competitions alongside the international game.
“It will usher in more advance processes towards individual management of the international players because we are removing Premiership fixtures from international periods and extending the season to June.
“Rather than players missing en masse we can manage it through the season, which is good for them and good for our competition.”
The overhaul will also mean the Anglo-Welsh competition is expanded, possibly to include sides from Ireland and Scotland, as a development tournament to bring through the next generation of talent to fill the gaps left by the removal of Premiership games during the Test match weekends.
Discussions are ongoing about the dates for the European Champions and Challenge Cup competitions although it is likely that the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final will be pushed back by a week from their current slots in April and May to give the international players more time to prepare following the Six Nations.
Champions Cup games will also not immediately follow the November Test matches.
The global agreement means the World Cup window is cemented within the calendar, kicking off one week earlier in the second week of September after Japan. Home union tours to the southern hemisphere in a World Cup season will also be reduced to two matches for player welfare.
“This agreement represents an historic milestone for the global game,” said Bill Beaumont, the World Rugby chairman. “But more than that it also has player welfare and equity at its heart, driving certainty and opportunities for emerging rugby powers and laying the foundations for a more compelling and competitive international game.”