RELENTLESS TREADMILL OF GAME IS LEAVING THE SPORT IN NEED OF A STREAMLINED TEST SCHEDULE
he relentless treadmill of the professional game is leaving a trail of battered bodies and a sport in need of a streamlined Test schedule The perfect global rugby season will never exist. Well, maybe it does on paper but not in reality. There are competing hemispheres, unions and clubs to pacify, not to mention different financial imperatives, audiences, timezones and ambitions. Sticking half-a-dozen adolescent ferrets down your trousers simultaneously is slightly less problematic.
Now imagine all six ferrets arriving with their own legal advisers and you begin to grasp the unenviable situation facing World Rugby as it attempts to broker a schedule that suits everyone. Small wonder the initial proposals to have emerged from negotiations have fallen short of jaw-dropping. A suspension of summer Test tours in the year after a World Cup? The northern hemisphere club season poking into June? The Six Nations staying broadly, if not exactly, where it is? We are talking cautious diplomacy, not revolution.
Perhaps there should be gratitude for such small mercies, given the worldwide Test diary between World Cups is currently blank from 2019 onwards. There will inevitably be some sort of compromise. But what price a sport so wrapped in self-interest it cannot see the bigger picture: players abandoning cashstrapped unions to flock to wealthy club leagues overseas, a dominant world-leading side making many of their rivals look pedestrian, too many meaningless games in front of mediocre crowds. Fail to think about the many rather than just the few and everyone will be poorer.
So who, precisely, should any new structure be looking to satisfy? The easy answer is television, because it pays the bills. Not so fast. If your competitions are so compelling, your product so attractive, your players so skilful and the queues for tickets so long, the TV and advertising dollars will follow automatically. That is the problem, from a distance, with Super Rugby, which will continue in its present bloated format next year. Full stadia and logistical sense are only minor considerations, prompting an increasing raft of players from Australia and South Africa, in particular, to seek a more fulfilling professional life in Europe.
No, the secret is to make the players feel they have the best of both worlds: playing a great game and not being flogged to death for the privilege of doing so. If they are fresh and playing good opposition on decent surfaces, everyone benefits. If they are happy and fulfilled, fans and dvertisers will take even more of a shine to them. If they say they do not want to get on a plane every five minutes, it probably pays to listen to them.
Need for protection
They also need to be protected from themselves. Watch a game of modern Premiership rugby and it is a minor miracle anyone lasts until Christmas, never mind next July when the 2017 Lions tour wraps up. Less is unquestionably more, certainly for the leading players. To expect them to prepare for 22 league games and potential play-offs, plus nine European club fixtures and a further 12 Tests per year is ludicrous; in a decade’s time it will probably be illegal.
So let’s draw up something with the players’ interests front and centre. They still want to play in big games for their clubs and represent their countries to the best of their ability. Having a fallow summer once in a while would be beneficial and it would help to formalise the current summer and autumn Test format as well. Why not split the world rankings into groups of six — New Zealand, England, Australia, South Africa, Wales and Ireland would currently be in the premier division — and require them all to play each other in the same calendar year? England could go to NZ and Australia in June and play the remaining three in Europe in November, although there is nothing to stop the All Blacks, say, travelling north in June if required. The top two would contest the Global Test Challenge final in late November with the winners collecting the newly minted Gus Pichot trophy. The bottom two would play off, as happens in tennis’s Davis Cup, to avoid dropping to the next level where Argentina, France, Scotland, Fiji, Georgia and Japan would be vying to replace them. Arrange for the Six Nations to start slightly later in March and, suddenly, there is a fresh, invigorating, more meritocratic feel to the landscape. Not to mention shorter tours.
It will not happen immediately but let us just imagine something similar was kicking off in 2018. The draw would be made the previous year, giving everyone plenty of time to market the fixtures. The grand final could be played at a neutral venue if that helps logistically; Ireland are already due to face New Zealand in Chicago in November. Income from worldwide ticket sales, television revenue and sponsorship would be pooled and fairly allocated, rather than the host nation pocketing everything. Nor, with the final being played in the first week of December, would it clash unduly with football’s World Cup.
That would mean a player such as Dylan Hartley or Alun Wyn Jones playing 11 Tests, to include any final or play-off. A World Cup season would be the only year that figure rises to 12. Only in the two other autumns might there be traditional incoming three-Test tours to Europe, including midweek games against keen club opposition. A world club shoot-out between the winners of the four major competitions — Premiership, Pro12, Super Rugby and Top 14 — is another alternative.
Domestically, things will need tweaking on a case-bycase basis. Expanding the Premiership to reflect the fact there are, at most, 16 clubs in England who can hope to sustain viable professional rugby is one option; a conference system with enhanced playoffs might work. Either way, international players would not start playing until October and would also be otherwise engaged during international periods. The European club competition would reach its climax on the first weekend in June alongside an enhanced springtime sevens schedule.