This is not soccer but rugby aping global game’s gluttony

If we’ve learned anything from Netflix TV series, sports podcasts and purveyors of fancy doughnuts, it’s that you can have too much of a good thing. What is at first new and exciting can soon become bewilderingly oversaturated, and soon you have no idea what’s good anymore, or indeed, what to listen to while you are queuing at the Krispy Kreme drive-thru, writes Tommy Martin.

Rugby’s bloated November internationals are firmly in the grip of this phenomenon. This shouldn’t be the case, as they represent the point of the season at which the general sports fan first fully engages with the game, having ignored the PRO14’s early phoney war and only dipped their toe into the Champions Cup’s opening rounds.

Ideally they should be an eagerly awaited treat, but these days the November international Tests look like they have indulged in a few too many Chocolate Custards. The clue is in the fact that the November internationals now actually start in October and finish in December, the extra flab spilling over like builder’s cleavage from World Rugby’s shrink-fit three-week official window.