Aspirant nations need the chance to reach top table
This can be year to change the game forever – and it should include setting up a tier two World Cup
The recent World Cup was an amazing tournament and represents an open goal for the game. Whether it was Uruguay’s unforgettable win over Fiji, or Japan’s seismic achievement in beating Ireland and Scotland, the tournament was notable for so-called tier two nations taking big strides. Japan 2019 should be the moment the game changed forever, but we know too many opportunities have been squandered in the past, so it is up to the governing body, World Rugby, to make sure a historic chance to grow the game is not lost.
Those six weeks in Japan were eye-opening, but it is up to us to ensure that the effects last for four years. That 2020 is a year in which we can effect a paradigm shift is entirely appropriate – we must set out a clear vision of how to change the game for the better, for ever. World Rugby has, of course, already tried to reshape the game with its proposals for an integrated global season. However, the northern hemisphere saw this as a power grab by World Rugby and an attempt by the Sanzar unions to tap into the Six Nations unions’ revenue streams, so it was stymied.
What we need now is a concerted attempt to give the tier two nations a structure within which they can finally begin to transition into teams who are competitive enough consistently to take on the world’s elite.
That means regular Tests against the established powerhouses for rugby’s emerging forces.
To date only Argentina and Italy have ascended to the top table, and only the Pumas truly look as if they belong there. The Pumas are now an integral part of the Rugby Championship and Super Rugby, and are making incremental strides in both competitions, as France did after joining the Five Nations in 1910.
Italy continue to struggle so badly in the Six Nations that many question their continued involvement. However, unlike Argentina – whose Rugby Championship involvement came on the back of consistent displays in Super Rugby – Italy have only recently really begun genuinely to address the issues around club rugby, and it will take time before Conor O’Shea’s blueprint for stronger Pro14 clubs feeds through to Test level.
Japan are taking their own route to sustain the remarkable strides made at successive World Cups. Their domestic game is undergoing a revolution, with the best players in the world flooding into their domestic league while their Super Rugby team, the Sunwolves, have been disbanded. It is a clear and well-financed strategy and, given the commercial strength of Japanese rugby, there will be no lack of tier one Test sides willing to travel there.
The same, however, is not true for most aspirant nations, so World Rugby needs to step in. Even those tier two nations who have beaten tier one countries – Samoa, Argentina, Italy, Romania, Japan, Fiji, Tonga, Namibia and the United States – have struggled (usually in vain) to attract incoming tier one sides.
World Rugby showed enormous ambition when trying to launch the global season, and must now recapture that spirit. I would suggest two main considerations on how this can be done so that we close the gap between tier one and two nations. The first is that tier two nations need incoming tours every year to build up domestic interest and to give their sides a chance to become consistently competitive rather than just becoming cash-generating canon fodder for the autumn internationals at one of the traditional Six Nations grounds, or playing in either the Pacific Nations Cup or Rugby Europe Championship.
This does not mean tier one sides necessarily need to tour every year – England, say, could tour the Pacific and play Japan, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga one summer, or visit the Americas, playing Canada, the US, Argentina and Uruguay. If coordinated by World Rugby, it would give the tier two nations exposure and revenue. Uruguay, for example, did not play a tier one country between the past two World Cups. At the very least they could have had an opportunity to play in the Pacific Nations Cup. Playing progression is key.
My second recommendation is that World Rugby should pay for each aspirant tier two nation to have an experienced director of rugby from a tier one nation. They would need the coaching experience to oversee the national team, as well as programmes and budget responsibility.
Where possible they would also involve themselves in the under-20s, women’s game, club and schools rugby so they could take a long-term view, and could compare solutions with the other directors of rugby paid for by World Rugby. There would also be uniformity across player development programmes and vital support services such as strength and conditioning, medical, analysis and referees. At the moment World Rugby only pays for short-term coaching secondments to countries competing in the World Cup who, it worries, may be so uncompetitive that they would bring the competition into disrepute.
In the grand scheme of things this is no more than a sticking-plaster solution. Nor would it work simply to give the nation in question hard cash, with reports of such funds going missing too often. Instead, I believe an experienced World Rugby-funded administrator should be there on the ground to help with the logistics and contacts. This is how we can help countries take a step back and work in a systematic way towards the end goal of becoming a tier one nation.
All of this, of course, takes money – and lots of it – but I believe there is a way to square this circle. Let us have a tier two World Cup to run alongside the full World Cup, and be played in the host country and the same time as the tournament proper. In Japan, or in France or the UK, grounds would be full to watch Germany play Spain, Ivory Coast take on Korea, or Zimbabwe face Romania. It would raise money and the profile of the game in so many nations where rugby needs a helping hand.
There are, of course, issues thrown up by all of these proposals, but if we do not embrace change we are destined yet again to maintain the status quo – and we are better than that.