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Australia Wallabies players celebrate after they defeated New Zealand All Blacks in the DHL Hong Kong Bledisloe Cup rugby match in Hong Kong Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010. Australia won 26-24. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Let me say from the outset that I enjoy rugby union as a top international sport. I watch the Wallabies when Channel Seven bothers to air it at a reasonable hour, sit for a month keeping tabs on the IRB World Cup, and have a scan of the Six Nations highlights.
I attended both 2003 World Cup games at Adelaide Oval (I used to live in SA). It didn’t matter that Australia thrashed Namibia, it was about being part of a major world event. Rundle Mall was abuzz – the next night Argentina met Ireland the place was full of sky blue and green-shirted fans. The Irish drank like mad and sang like mad, putting Aussies to shame and turning 80 per cent of the venue into a Dublin-esque virtual home atmosphere. Brilliant.
I know enough of the basics to certainly find it an entertaining TV sport, too. Especially in a World Cup year – I care about the Tri-Nations more, the Six Nations more. Strangely, I am yet to quite get to grips with Super XV provincial stuff though – must be something to do with all those animal nicknames that give no indication as to the actual location of the teams.
At international level, too, rugby union already has plenty of meaning going for it, but it lacks context. Maybe, in this World Cup year, the IRB should look to FIFA as a administrative model – no, not in terms of holding Cup hosting conferences, but more in the way the sport itself is divided up among its regional confederations.
In rugby union, it’s almost as if there’s the northern and southern hemispheres, and they only meet when it’s World Cup time. Fair enough in itself, but what about broadening the base of the sport outside those Cup cycles? I’m not advocating all 118 teams play for the best part of two years in advance to qualify for the thing, but each region could promote itself via larger-scale contests than currently exist.
Recently I noted an article on The Roar about the second-tier competitions in both Europe and South America, and it got me thinking… why shouldn’t the IRB organise proper continental championships to rival those run by FIFA? I know there will be some who would say that it’s an utterly ludicrous suggestion, but it would give more weight to the international scope of rugby and something for the non-major nations to really strive for.
At present, both the Six Nations and Tri-Nations are played out in their own bubble realities – hygienically sealed off from added interest from fans in much of the rest of the continents they are part of. Why not give nations like Russia and Argentina a greater stake in building the brand of rugby world-wide? The solution sounds so easy in theory, yet probably hard to get past a few one-track-minded nostalgia fans in reality.
Why isn’t there promotion/relegation for Six Nations and European Nations sides – or how about just expanding it into a proper European Cup? It may not be the 24-team behemoth that the UEFA version will become from France 2016 onward (next year it’s 16 teams in Ukraine/Poland) but even eight, 10 or 12 teams would be a start, plus a qualifying competition if you’d like to add that as well. The major six nations could still organise international Tests/friendlies around a European Cup if they so desired.
Ditto for South America (and possibly the United States and Canada). I’d keep the Argies in that continental zone instead of tossing them into an expanded Tri-Nations, and then put Australia, South Africa and New Zealand into the Asia-Pacific, alongside Japan, Fiji and the like. Of course, the same as the Euro nations, they could organise the rest of the Test schedule as desired to keep the punters happy.
Based on the the most recent European, South American and Pacific continental fixtures over the last three years and the IRB world rankings to February 7 this year, we might see a FIFA-style set of Cups – each hosted in a single country – emerge with the following nations involved…(again, I’m talking hypothetically here). No, not more rugby for the sake of it – but more rugby with a world-wide purpose in promoting the game.
A EUROPEAN CUP
GROUP A – England, Ireland, Wales, Georgia, Romania.
GROUP B – France, Scotland, Italy, Russia, Portugal.
AN AMERICAS CUP
GROUP A – Argentina, United States, Chile, Paraguay, Venezuela.
GROUP B – Canada, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia.
AN ASIA-PACIFIC CUP
GROUP A – New Zealand, South Africa, Samoa, Tonga, Hong Kong.
GROUP B – Australia, Fiji, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.