Plans to create a 12-nation World Rugby League which would reportedly secure huge financial windfalls for the competitors, while effectively throwing developing nations to the wolves have been heavily attacked by leading figures in the sport.
Administrators at World Rugby - formerly the International Rugby Board - have advocated a global international calendar for many years and in revealing details of their proposals yesterday, The New Zealand Herald claimed that the intention is to introduce the new, annual competition next year.
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Based around the existing Six Nations Championship and the southern hemisphere’s International Championship - which would also become a six-team contest with Japan and the USA joining Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa - points accrued in those tournaments would double up as contributing to the World League.
The European teams would then meet three of those from the southern hemisphere when undertaking summer tours and the other three would visit them during their autumn tours.
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The top four would then contest end-of-year semi-finals and final, adding two more weekends of fixtures to already congested schedules, which is the principal bone of contention for leading players such as Jonny Sexton and Owen Farrell who, as members of the International Rugby Players group are understandably concerned about the work-load implications.
However, the much more serious concern for the sport as a whole is the impact on global development since this creates an extended version of what the Six and Five Nations Championships have always been with a league of nations operating as a self-serving, exclusive club.
That these plans were as advanced as they must have been, goes some way to explaining why, in an off-record discussion during last month’s Six Nations Championship launch, a previously well-respected administrator was dismissive of the suggestion that the introduction of promotion and relegation to the Six Nations is long overdue.
It has long seemed obvious that a process that would enhance the development of nations like Georgia, Romania and others could broaden the global appeal of the sport, just as offering the leading South Seas nations, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, could do in the southern hemisphere.
The cynicism conveyed in his view that there was no chance of that happening purely because of commercial considerations, regardless of the implications for the sport in those countries, was disturbing enough in itself.
Now, however, it seems that the few opportunities that are currently available to those second-tier nations which cannot bring money to the table in the way Japan and the USA evidently can, are to be denied them.
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The implications for global competition are obvious since, for all that these proposals claim that the World Rugby League would take place annually, other than in World Cup years, the nature of rugby is such that the teams who are outwith the favoured twelve, will be even more under-prepared for World Cups than is already the case.
At every level in rugby union, however, the growing impression is of a sport in which long-term development is being disregarded in favour of the maximisation of profits in the short-term.
In this instance a broadcaster apparently willing to offer each competing nation some £7 million per year and that seems like to be more than enough to persuade those who will benefit most right now, but will be long gone by the time the consequences of what will surely be irreparable damage to their sports manifest themselves.
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