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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There is nothing particularly significant about Ireland in this regard compared to other Tier 1 nations. To look at 'strategy' for illegal play its best to see what teams push boundaries with new laws. SA have milked two tries at ruck block downs. The strategy is to charge the first few before the ball is out at about 4 seconds but pull out and put up hands in reigned apology. The referees usually allow the scum half to clear without awarding a penalty in this scenario. The problem with that being that the scrumhalf is now taking over 5 seconds through no fault of his own. Having achieved a few slow balls > 5s , the SA forward can now pick a scrum to charge dead on 5s. Now if the scrum half waits, he will concede a penalty, as we saw against Scotland. With the new rule in place, any early charge should result in an immediate penalty.
SA also got an offside block against England which was pivotal again after a couple of 'apologetic' offside aborted charges forcing England to clear slowly.
Go to commentsYep, you're not the sharpest tool in the shed are you?
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