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I was taken aback by the comments earlier this week from World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper, in which he inadvertently or otherwise suggested that internationals are not necessarily as equal as we thought.
“At the moment 56 per cent of the games of international rugby in the world are friendlies and that’s what we are looking at and maybe swinging it back towards more meaningful competitive games and that may even be with interaction between north and south,” Gosper said, speaking on the prospect of changing the way the June – soon to be July – and November Test windows might look in the future.
“There are a number of models out there. I think ultimately it would help add even more meaning to a Six Nations or The Rugby Championships so it would be good news for everyone, I think.”
Well, maybe.
Certainly, the idea of adding more meaning to games or series is worthy, but surely that’s the point of the World Rugby rankings, and why headlines were rightly written when the Wallabies’ loss to Argentina on the Gold Coast meant that Australia slipped to their lowest ranking ever.
Even the narrative before that Test – Australia needing to beat Argentina so as to avoid an unwanted record – ensured the Test had plenty of meaning.
Gosper’s attachment of the 56 per cent figure is worrying, because on the surface it certainly reads like more than half all of all rugby Tests are substandard. But how on Earth was this figure reached? How can it be determined which matches do and don’t have meaning?
It’s not like one-day cricket, where a three, five or even seven-match series will be played between two countries for no obvious reason – aside from broadcast money, particularly Indian broadcast money.
In fact, there are so few multiple-match Test series played between nations now; England and Ireland’s tour of Australia in the last two years were the first time either nation had played three Tests against the Wallabies in a single series in the history of the game.
And even if you wanted to argue that a ‘dead rubber’ third Test in a series carried less meaning than the first two, then that certainly wasn’t and can’t be considered the case before the series began.
AAP Image/Dave Hunt
There is, perhaps, an argument to be made that games outside the Rugby World Cup – and maybe you can throw qualifiers into this mix too – don’t quite carry the same urgency. But then when you bring ranking points back into the debate, and consider that those ranking points determine World Cup seedings, and who qualifies automatically or via a process, then surely the ‘meaning’ quickly returns.
And either way, games outside the tournament and its qualification process would be significantly more than 56 per cent of all internationals played.
But getting away from which Tests are meaningful and which ones aren’t, are there benefits to be found from this idea of the top 12 nations playing each other within a year?
Well, again, maybe. But…
And that’s perhaps the biggest issue. As noble as the idea might be – and I’m not totally against the idea – there are so many questions arising from the concept that you just wonder how it can possibly get off the ground.
For one thing, the revenue would have to split absolutely evenly. You couldn’t have the situation where, say, Ireland (currently ranked second), Scotland (sixth), and Fiji (tenth) fill their coffers from hosting ‘their’ pool of four teams, while the other nine countries wait for their turn to play host and enjoy the spoils.
Equally, it would have to be equally shared because there’s simply no economic way that Fiji and Tonga, say, would see as much revenue come in as would Wales and Australia, and neither would they see as much as England and France. It would have to be completely even and equitable.
Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images
But even then, this would cause problems in itself, because undoubtedly it would cost more to host a pool within the tournament in some countries than it would others. And what would stop the unscrupulous accountants slapping an ‘expense margin’ on top of their genuine hosting costs to ensure they get their windfall early, and before World Rugby split the rest?
Further, with the rankings changing so regularly – as rankings do – how and when would you decide the seedings? If Japan hovered around 11th for all but the last fortnight of the seeding period, but two losses in two weeks dropped them to 13th, wouldn’t they have a decent argument that they were still one of the best 12 teams that year?
And this is without getting onto important issues like how often should it be played, or how the pools should be split?
Would we end up with a League of Nations ranking inside the wider World Rugby rankings? And what could teams 13 and 14 do in order to break into the competition?
The idea isn’t without merit; I’ll very deliberately say that again. If there’s a way of doing something like this that’s fair and equitable, and national unions aren’t just looking for how they can most benefit for it, then by all means, let’s look into it.
But I’d hate to see rugby follow the mistakes made by the International Cricket Council, where genuinely meaningless series and competitions like the Champions Trophy have turned one-day cricket into a circus.