Comment: Money talks in Nations Championship plan

World Rugby’s efforts this week to clarify its position on the proposed Nations Championship are unlikely to have offered much comfort to those for whom the PRO14 is their staple oval-ball fare.

The sport’s global governing body has been firefighting since last week’s leak of its plans for Test rugby beyond 2022 and a closed 12-nation competition with no promotion or relegation were shot down by leading players including Johnny Sexton, Owen Farrell, and Kieran Read under the auspices of the International Rugby Players.

Ireland fly-half Sexton, the president of the International Rugby Players Council, was among those to raise concerns over player welfare given the leaked proposal included plans for its league to culminate in a play-off semi-finals and a final would mean a run of Test matches over five consecutive weeks stretching from the November window into December.

Furthermore, the council expressed dismay a ring-fenced tournament said to include the Six Nations and Rugby Championship teams plus the USA and Japan would exclude the Pacific Island nations and other tier-two Test teams.

All of which led on Wednesday to World Rugby issuing its clarification on “the merits and structure of an annual global competition” ahead of key meetings in Dublin next week.

It insisted there would be a pathway for all Test nations via promotion and relegation while the Six Nations, Rugby Championship, and Lions tours would remain as “jewels in the calendar”.

World Rugby also said one of its goals was to achieve “harmonisation with club rugby” but the Irish Examiner understands representatives from the PRO14, English Premiership and French Top14 have not been invited to next week’s key meetings, just as they were frozen out of initial discussions.

Player resistance to those five potential Tests in successive weeks is likely to hold the greatest sway with the game’s power brokers in Dublin.

Nor will the clubs be enamoured by two extra weekends of Test rugby which could stretch into December and clearly have an effect on the domestic leagues and European competitions.

Guinness PRO14 chief executive Martin Anayi is on the record as being in favour of fewer games and no fixture overlaps for the league on Test weekends and recent reports of an expansion to 16 teams with the addition of two more South African outfits from as early as next season will, he believes, lead to fewer games.

One can understand the strategy as clearly the leagues are hurt most by the international calendar and arguably no league would be hurt more than the PRO14 given its clubs effectively support four national sides.

A counter argument would be that playing on through international windows provides opportunities for young talent to gain valuable experience but it is not a recipe for good stadium attendances or healthy television audiences.

The current schedule of 21 regular season games plus two or three play-off ties could be reduced by moving from 14 to 16 clubs, enabling, perhaps, a single league and teams playing each other just once, home one year, away the next, for a total of just 15 fixtures. Local derbies in-country, such as the interprovincial clashes in Ireland, could be home and away, adding three further matches for a total of 18, still three less than the current format and giving the leagues more wiggle room to schedule away from Test windows.

And with no clashes, there could be a greater chance of teams fielding stronger line-ups including their international stars. Yet there remains frustration amongst the clubs and their competition organisers that, for all the talk of harmonisation, World Rugby has not engaged on any serious level with them.

There needs to be a joint effort to figure out the optimum number of games and ensure that number fits into a co-existing rather competing club and international rugby schedule.

Test rugby naturally dominates the conversation because it is the economic driver which allows Unions to finance their administration of the game as a whole and in Ireland’s case all four of its provinces.

For the PRO14 clubs, the hope would be that their voice is at least represented by their Unions when they return to the World Rugby table in Dublin next week.

Yet given the home unions did not hold the line in last year’s voting for the 2023 World Cup hosting rights, two of them, Scotland and Wales, voting against fellow PRO14 shareholder Ireland and instead backing the winning bid from France, the chance of a united front being articulated appears remote.

Just as then, everyone is looking after their bottom lines. Money is driving this but how it will help to make the sport and its calendar more cohesive is anyone’s guess, certainly not on the basis of the discourse of the last week or so.