Rugby facing seismic change

New competition plan

GLOBAL rugby executives have been urged to embrace plans for the sport’s biggest revolution since the dawn of professionalism – including a world grand final every two years.

The leading unions will meet for critical talks in Dublin this week and World Rugby wants them to commit to the new competition by Friday, with a view to a formal vote on its introduction being held in November.

That would trigger the most radical change to the structure of the sport since 1995, when rugby turned professional and the Tri-Nations – featuring New Zealand, South Africa and Australia – was created, backed by investment from Rupert Murdoch.

The working plan for the new two-tiered competition is for the top division to be founded in 2026, featuring 12 teams: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy from the Six Nations, as well as Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina, Fiji and Japan.

The emerging nations are already on board, having agreed at a meeting in London last week to sacrifice annual fixtures against top-ranked teams so that they can form a global second division in 2024.

The competition would be held in even years – avoiding clashes with the World Cup and British & Irish Lions tours – and reach a climax on the fourth weekend of November, with a final and two promotion/ relegation play-offs, one for the north and one for the south.

Membership of the Six Nations would be unaffected. The so-called “Nations Championship” – there is no formal title as yet – would be based only on results from the July and November windows.

Each northern-hemisphere team would play a southernhemisphere rival once, either home or away. To reduce travel time, the southern hemisphere nations would be divided into two blocks, with the lowest-ranked team required to play their July Tests on neutral territory.

For example, in the first year, England, Wales and Ireland could go on a July tour and play Tests in NZ, Australia and Japan.

Meanwhile, Scotland, France and Italy would travel to South Africa and Argentina, with Fiji choosing one of those two countries to stage their games.

In November, the fixtures would cross over, with England hosting South Africa, Argentina and Fiji.

The top two teams after those six fixtures would then meet in a grand final.