New Biennial Global tournament from 2026

[Bada-Bing!]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/66074883

So just a slimmed down World Cup then.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

What a pointless waste of time which will inevitably have a knock on negative effect on the world cup

God bless the blazers and their room temperature IQs

 

[pagliaccio_euforico]

From the article a day before that one. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/66074883

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It is also understood the Six Nations Championship could lose one of its rest weekends to accommodate a longer November international window.

World Rugby said "player welfare" was high on the agenda.

---

 

[General Melchett]

Wonder how long it'll be until we're told some games will be staged in Saudi or Qatar for 'logistical reasons' or in an attempt to grow the sport there.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

So more big internationals when players are already playing too much and with no changes to how the international games interact with the club games...?

Rugby really is such a poorly run sport. No wonder it's dying.

 

[Reiser99]

Terrible idea personally, as people have said it's just filling up an already crowded calendar. On top summer tours were also opportunities for t2 nations to play t1 nations, so you're limiting their growth as well.

 

[Umaga's Witness]

I don't think they are proposing to add games, they said there will be six games, three each within two existing windows.

What I don't like is it will probably replace test series with one offs. And it locks in a structure where the top tier doesn't play the next tier.

Apart from that at least it's better than the World Cup in terms of showing who is best in the world. Hopefully it reduces the importance people place in world cups. It might make the value people place on non World Cup cross hemisphere matches go up.

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

Why oh why oh why.
Stick to summer tours
Sort out the Rugby championship and 6N's to include more teams or allow promotion and relegation from a second tier competition
And give us a proper ******* biennial Churchill cup you cowards made of tier 1 A teams and Tier 2/3 1st teams.

Expand the Rugby championship to 6 teams add in Japan and one of Fiji, Tonga or Samoa
Have a second tier comp with maybe have it as a round robin competition based in one nation and have it a short term format to allow a competition of say
Fiji, Tonga, Uruguay, Namibia, Hong Kong, Korea


and make something unique to world sport and have a biannual Global club competition sort out the global calender and give us the
Top 4 teams in the
Prem
URC
Top 14
Super rugby
Top league
20 clubs rotate the host competition
Nothing else like it in sports and it might actually interest people....

 

[LeinsterMan (NotTigsMan)]

Not even got Japan in it, which is a massive chance for growth for rugby
Considering it's population is nearly as many as all 4 Rugby championship countries combined...

And you know already seems to be interested in rugby
I genuinely hate the upper lot of the rugby unions.

 

[pagliaccio_euforico]

The world cups should be important.

The issue with games is that teams are playing games outside of windows. Some nations own club teams so they can force players to appear out side of windows. They are then surprised when their clubs fail.

Games outside windows shouldn't count towards rankings (honestly don't know if they do). Keep summer tours, 5 tier ones up north can rotate through tier ones down south + Japan. Italy can play European teams.

Fall should only be three tests with each tier 1 having to play a tier 2.

 

[Kiwiwomble]

my biggest concern is yet another competition...we're just diluting these competitions importance and making it confusing for new fans

in NZ, you have club/NPC/Super/RC and every 4 years the RWC....now this new thing and thats not counting 1stXV, lots of people over here saying NPC and super is pretty broken...but rather than putting effort into fixing them...lets make a new comp

also, SANZAAR fights internally enough about running their own comps...now they need to first agree on what they want and then get it agreed by the 6N?

top all blacks play almost as many Internationals as Super games...probably more by the time you take into consideration resting...let me check

so, aaron smith only played 7-8 super rugby games....but could potentially play 9 games for the all blacks not including RWC playoffs....thats broke....its hardly a spectacle of sport when its what they do the most!

 

[General Melchett]

Not saying it's the answer but if they are going ahead with this why not introduce age caps for this comp so that younger players who aren't playing as much top level rugby throughout the rest year get experience at test level e.g. 13 of the test 23 has to be 23 and under. That way half of the older experienced players will play in the summer and the rest in November so that they get a break in the calendar. Not ideal but the lack of coordination between the various bodies makes it a player damage limitation exercise.

 

[higgik]

What about scrapping the Summer Tours?
Make the international window Sept and Oct, same dates as RWC.
Then have a 4 yr cycle
RWC
Regional Champs
Lions
Champions Trophy

Regional could be Euro/Africa
10 teams, 6N plus SA plus top 3 ranked teams.
4 matches over 5 weeks, followed by semi finals and finals (6 matches over 7 weeks) which is one week less than current summer tours and AI.

Champions Trophy would be top 2 Euro Africa, top Oceania/Asia, top America.
Play this at single host country

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Setting aside the format, is fair to say many rugby nations are horrified by World Rugby handing over responsibility for the June and November test windows to the 6N and SANZAAR. If your face doesn't fit you will not be 'invited' and you would have to be incredibly naive to think those Tier1 unions would uphold promotion/relegation if it would impact negatively on one of their members. Hence there being no apparent commitment to relegation happening in 2030, merely warm words that such a thing may be possible.

So World Rugby are effectively saying they will have zero oversight over Tier1 unions for each of the 18 or so weekends that Tier1 are in action. Tier 1 can play whoever they want, whenever they want, forever. This can only be to empower the Tier1 unions to ring fence it as they see fit (for example if Georgia and Portugal are the top ranked Tier2s in 2030). If World Rugby were running the tournament they could potentially enforce promotion and set clear criteria for the 11th and 12th teams (e.g, world ranking).

I think this is potentially the single most disappointing and protectionist nonsense I've seen in three decades of following rugby (and that's saying something). It has now become a very difficult sport to follow if you have a strong moral compass. Somewhere, between bullfighting and the Lingerie Football League.

I'm now hoping Tier2 unions develop commercially sustainable professional leagues so they can stand on their own two feet. Then they can wake up and smell the coffee and create a breakaway union with a more democratic governing body and an end to a culture of ring-fencing nonsense (last week SANZAAR announced a ring fenced u20 competition, kicking out Fiji and replacing them with SA). It seems pie in the sky at the moment but if this World League does not commit to promotion/relegation then it becomes a time for desperate measures for unions like Georgia and Uruguay who do everything right, raise superior crops of young players than some Tier1 unions and yet will never be admitted to the inner circle because of their modest economies and seemingly because of their ethnicity, geography and/or language.

 

[pagliaccio_euforico]

Uruguay just bested Scotland at the U20s. Georgia is a legitimate rugby nation and would compete in second tier of six nations.

I actually think South America has a chance to grow rugby on its own. It will be an uphill battle and it won't be perfect but I think they have enough nations to play each other consistently. The guys who are sacrificing careers now to be semi-professional athletes will be viewed as pioneers.

 

[Umaga's Witness]

Setting aside the format, is fair to say many rugby nations are horrified by World Rugby handing over responsibility for the June and November test windows to the 6N and SANZAAR. If your face doesn't fit you will not be 'invited' and you would have to be incredibly naive to think those Tier1 unions would uphold promotion/relegation if it would impact negatively on one of their members. Hence there being no apparent commitment to relegation happening in 2030, merely warm words that such a thing may be possible.

So World Rugby are effectively saying they will have zero oversight over Tier1 unions for each of the 18 or so weekends that Tier1 are in action. Tier 1 can play whoever they want, whenever they want, forever. This can only be to empower the Tier1 unions to ring fence it as they see fit (for example if Georgia and Portugal are the top ranked Tier2s in 2030). If World Rugby were running the tournament they could potentially enforce promotion and set clear criteria for the 11th and 12th teams (e.g, world ranking).

I think this is potentially the single most disappointing and protectionist nonsense I've seen in three decades of following rugby (and that's saying something). It has now become a very difficult sport to follow if you have a strong moral compass. Somewhere, between bullfighting and the Lingerie Football League.

I'm now hoping Tier2 unions develop commercially sustainable professional leagues so they can stand on their own two feet. Then they can wake up and smell the coffee and create a breakaway union with a more democratic governing body and an end to a culture of ring-fencing nonsense (last week SANZAAR announced a ring fenced u20 competition, kicking out Fiji and replacing them with SA). It seems pie in the sky at the moment but if this World League does not commit to promotion/relegation then it becomes a time for desperate measures for unions like Georgia and Uruguay who do everything right, raise superior crops of young players than some Tier1 unions and yet will never be admitted to the inner circle because of their modest economies and seemingly because of their ethnicity, geography and/or language.

Well, bill Beaumont pretty much said that the reason for the world league is precisely to take back control so they can promote the game below tier 1 by having promotion relegation because they can't enforce this in 6 nations or rugby championship as they have no control over those comps.

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Well, bill Beaumont pretty much said that the reason for the world league is precisely to take back control so they can promote the game below tier 1 by having promotion relegation because they can't enforce this in 6 nations or rugby championship as they have no control over those comps.

Yes, he said that but did something quite different. His solution was to give 6N and SANZAAR full control over all Test windows with no commitment to promotion/relegation in the World League or indeed a commitment to ever play a Tier2 side they don't approve of outside of a RWC. So now all test windows are closed shops from 2026 onwards until such time as 6N/SANZAAR unions have a collective change of heart.

This is worse than the status quo where the San Francisco agreement forces Tier1 unions to play the top ranked Tier2 unions. Due to the unique way World Rugby functions this can be pushed through with the agreement of just 8 Tier1 unions regardless of the thoughts of the rest of the rugby playing world.

If promotion / relegation materialises then this can be better than the status quo, but that seems far less likely given WR will not have any control over Division1 of the World League.

 

[Bruce_ma gooshvili]

Uruguay just bested Scotland at the U20s. Georgia is a legitimate rugby nation and would compete in second tier of six nations.

I actually think South America has a chance to grow rugby on its own. It will be an uphill battle and it won't be perfect but I think they have enough nations to play each other consistently. The guys who are sacrificing careers now to be semi-professional athletes will be viewed as pioneers.

Sudamerica are working very closely with Spain and Portugal to create some Latin solidarity, with rumours of some kind of tournament for them. The problem is the way the World Rugby Council weighted votes work means these unions have almost zero influence on the direction of the sport. But yes, if there is to be a breakaway movement in the future it could have a hispanic flavour.

 

[Black Hawk]

There's simply too much International Rugby each season, especially the Tier 1 nations who regularly play 12+ games in a calendar year. It's the same predictable fixtures (and usually outcomes) year on year, which is what makes the World Cup and encounters such as New Zealand vs Namibia so unique. Cut down the number of matches played by Tier one nations in a year by a third and dispense with 2-3 game tours between the same opposition to allow for a greater variety of fixtures.

 

[Umaga's Witness]

Yes, he said that but did something quite different. His solution was to give 6N and SANZAAR full control over all Test windows with no commitment to promotion/relegation in the World League or indeed a commitment to ever play a Tier2 side they don't approve of outside of a RWC. So now all test windows are closed shops from 2026 onwards until such time as 6N/SANZAAR unions have a collective change of heart.

This is worse than the status quo where the San Francisco agreement forces Tier1 unions to play the top ranked Tier2 unions. Due to the unique way World Rugby functions this can be pushed through with the agreement of just 8 Tier1 unions regardless of the thoughts of the rest of the rugby playing world.

If promotion / relegation materialises then this can be better than the status quo, but that seems far less likely given WR will not have any control over Division1 of the World League.

They have not given control to sanzaar and 6n during June/July and end of year windows have they? In fact that is precisely when they've said the world league games will be played. So I don't understand what additional control they've given anyone. What am I not getting?