New world championship series possible following reports of meetings in Japan
Six Nations have reportedly held talks with unions in the southern hemisphere to create a new world championship series.
World Rugby’s proposed 12-team Nations Championship - a project they claimed they had £6.1billion in funding for a 12-year competition running over three World Cup cycles - was scrapped earlier this year due to a lack of a buy-in from the Six Nations countries who refused to accept the promotion and relegation aspects to the idea.
However, it has now emerged that the ten leading unions met up during the recent World Cup in Japan to tease out the possibility of creating a more structured Test calendar that would culminate in a final series every two or four years.
With Japan 2019 generating record revenues and television viewing figures, the UK Daily Mail have claimed union representatives held discussions in the hope of coming up with a formula that would ensure the leading teams would play each other more often.
For instance, in the current cycle of fixtures, England had only played New Zealand once in five years prior to last month’s World Cup semi-final meeting in Yokohama.
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While World Rugby’s proposal was ultimately binned, with concerns of player welfare also a factor due to the number of games proposed, a less demanding schedule that would not involve every country playing each other every other season could be the key to establishing a new championship series.
Another reported crucial difference from the scrapped World Rugby plan is that the new series would be ring-fenced by restricting it to only the ten Six Nations and Rugby Championship countries, along with Fiji and Japan.
The future of the Japanese at Test level has become critical following their progress to a first-ever World Cup quarter-final. World Cup success eventually convinced the Tri-Nations to invite Argentina into their fold and create the Rugby Championship.
Now, preliminary discussions have taken place in the southern hemisphere about the possibility of inviting in Japan and Fiji, although it has also been reported that the Japanese could secure an invite to a seven-team Six Nations.
Monitoring these developments in the wings are CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm whose talks with Six Nations were a contributory factor in that organisation not going along with World Rugby’s Nations Championship.
They have apparently agreed a still-to-be-announced £300million deal to buy 15 per cent stake in the Six Nations and are said to be in support of recent discussions in Japan to potentially establish a new world series.
World Rugby, though, would ultimately be required to give their blessing to any new tournament.
WATCH: Japan reportedly on brink of shock Six Nations invite following Rugby Championship dithering
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I think we need to get innovative with the new laws.
Now red cards are only 20 minutes, Razor should send Finau on a head hunting mission to hospitalise their 10 with a shoulder to the chops.
Give the conspiracy theorists a win.
England played well enough to win but couldnt score when they needed to and couldnt defend a couple of X-Factor moments from Telea which was ultimately the difference. They needed to hold the ball more and make the AB's make more tackles. Territorially they were good for the first 60. Defending their lead and playing pragmatic rugby in the last 20 was silly. The AB's always had the potential to come back. England still have a long way to go, definite progress would have been shown had they won but it seems they are still stuck where they were shortly after the six nations and their tour to NZ
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