New Zealand Herald rugby writer Gregor Paul has cast doubt over the long-term future of the newly launched Nations Championship.
The 12-team competition will pit the Sanzaar nations – South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina – alongside invitational sides Japan and Fiji, against the Six Nations teams across the July and November Test windows. It will culminate in a finals weekend at Twickenham in London.
But Paul believes the concept may be fundamentally flawed.
“Rugby might just be scraping the barrel with its push to get fans to buy into a battle of the hemispheres this November, and maybe the soon-to-launch Nations Championship is going to be more dead duck than golden goose,” he wrote in The New Zealand Herald.
One of his key concerns is France’s decision to again withhold players involved in the Top 14 final from the opening clash against the All Blacks in Christchurch on 4 July, having done the same during last year’s three-Test tour of New Zealand.
MORE: France B team to face All Blacks again
“Everyone thought that was a one-off – the last time the French would so overtly and disdainfully treat the international game like that,” wrote Paul. “Surely the Nations Championship would have secured agreements and commitments about country’s selecting their best players – but apparently not.”
For Paul, that failure to guarantee full-strength sides undermines the tournament’s credibility from the outset.
He is equally critical of the treatment of Fiji and Japan, particularly Fiji’s decision to stage their home matches in the UK for commercial reasons.
MORE: No home games for Fiji in Nations Championship
“What we have is the two perceived weakest nations being handed an inequitable draw, sold to them on the basis they should be grateful to be part of the competition,” he argued.
Paul added that certain Six Nations teams will enjoy “an unfair advantage of an effective – and in Scotland’s case an actual – additional home game.”
With integrity already in question, he suggests organisers may have overreached.
“Given the now inherent lack of integrity with which the Nations Championship has been straddled, there is a stronger argument that says organisers simply needed to bin it and come up with an entirely different format.”
Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images
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