Rugby Revived: Nations Championship

Rugby has been in the doldrums for years now, what with rigged games and lack of defence. But, watching over the weekend, the new Nations Championship format looks to be promising. This is where the top 12 teams in the world play one another for the overall title of world champion. The teams are divided into two pools, the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere. Peculiarly, Japan has been placed in the Southern Hemisphere.

Results (North First, then South)

France 32 - 34 New Zealand

Italy 10 - 27 Japan

Ireland 33 - 31 Australia

Wales 39 - 24 Fiji

England 21 - 45 South Africa

Scotland 47 - 38 Argentina

The competition will take place over two years, culminating in a grand final where the top team from the North plays the top team from the South.

One problem with this format is it is likely to lead to the South dominating the North, because all Rugby World Cup winners, apart from just the one - England - are in the South.

World Rugby are trying to head off the challenge posed by rival promotions such as Rugby360. In Super Rugby they now have their Super Rugby Weekends where all the teams descend on one city and play over a weekend. This year it was held in Christchurch and proved very successful. It helped that Christchurch has a covered stadium.

Rugby has to look at covering its stadiums but at the same time not making them too large. Crowd sizes positioned close to the pitch and numbering about 25k is ideal. The NRL play open to the elements but they do keep their crowd sizes down and have fans able to see the action, which makes for a far better experience.

So, the Super Rugby weekends and this format of a Nations Championship does at least attempt to address the problems rugby is facing, and that is; a lack of fan engagement and high scoring but ultimately unsatisfying games. 

Rugby has to sort out their feed to Google and other search engines. Currently, it is hard to get updates. I'd rate their efforts as a whole a fail on this, a D- for sure. Soccer are always on top of things, by contrast.

The best link I've found is the BBC in England, check it out:https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union 

There is also a second division, called the Nations Cup, and that includes the likes of Georgia, Romania, USA, Samoa etc., but no promotion/relegation as yet. This won't happen anytime soon, but if it does, Georgia are looking the most promising. Even now, Georgia could just about replace Italy.