Big guns in danger of just looking after No.1
ANALYSIS
PAUL REES WONDERS HOW THE SPORT CAN KEEP PAYING FOR ITSELF IN HARD TIMES….WHILE UNIONS BUILD FOR THE FUTURE
When the professional era started 29 years ago, it was suggested that it would lead to the demise of the Lions as old fashioned tours would no longer pay their way and clubs would not want their players to be away for so long.
Those concerns turned out to be wildly pessimistic, not least because of the travelling throng who followed the tourists to New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, ensuring that the midweek matches were not sparsely attended.
The Lions have become outliers with the July and November tour windows tending to involve only Test matches, although Wales are playing Queensland later this month in what will be the Australian side’s first match against a touring team since they defeated Scotland in 2004. The Lions are in Australia next year for a tour that will be a financial lifeline for the host union, two years before it hosts the World Cup on its own for the second time.
The tourists will play nine matches there after warming up against Argentina in Dublin with the three Tests scheduled for Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. The last midweek fixture was due to be against Melbourne Rebels, but they have been wound up after piling up debts and no alternative game has yet been announced, although it will be held in the city four days before the second Test is played there.
Lucrative as a Lions tour is, the three host unions only stage one every 12 years, which is a long time to make the booty stretch. New Zealand and South Africa have decided, as they work out how to get their finances pumping after the pandemic, that a long tour is the way to go.
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The All Blacks will travel to South Africa for a three-Test tour in 2026 and will play the four sides there that compete in the United Rugby Championship, the Stormers, Bulls, Lions and Sharks, as well as South Africa A. The Springboks would make the reverse trip in 2030, playing the five Super Rugby teams based in New Zealand as well as the Māori All Blacks.
It would mean that in the years of those tours there would be no Rugby Championship, which would leave Australia and Argentina with a gap to fill. The days of solidarity are over, as was witnessed by South Africa quitting Super Rugby for the lusher pastures of Europe, and loyalty does not transcend boundaries.
A new venture is starting in 2026, World Rugby’s Nations Championship, a bi-annual event which will give the July and November tour windows a competitive edge. The Six Nations and Rugby Championship sides will be involved, along with two others, assumed to be Fiji and Japan.
Teams from the north and south would play each other across the two windows with the winners of the two groups meeting in the final at the end of November. The championship will be held every two years so it does not conflict with the World Cup or a Lions tour.
So in 2026, players in the All Blacks’ squad will likely make more appearances for their country than they will for their Super Rugby franchises. And how will South Africa manage the time of their leading players given that the URC is a tournament that is spread over nine months with the Champions Cup and Challenge Cup thrown in?
It is hard to see Springboks making many of the league trips to Europe, which can be spread over a month, in the years of a long tour and it again raises the question that at a time when the international game is becoming more elite, how long will it take for the club game to follow?
Toulouse last weekend achieved a Champions Cup and Top 14 double with a 59-3 victory over Bordeaux-Begles in Marseille. It was rather more one-sided than their extra-time success against Leinster in May, but what was a record victory in a French final raised the question of whether Toulouse were outgrowing their environment.
It was being asked of Leinster not so long ago but they have fallen short in the URC in recent seasons having pushed hard in the Champions Cup but losing the last three finals. There is no English equivalent with Saracens in a redevelopment phase and the salary cap, even though it is rising by £1.4m next season, shackling a club’s ability to compete with the likes of Toulouse who last season saw off Harlequins, Bath, Exeter and Quins a second time.
Leicester in another era would be leading the English charge. They are the country’s best supported club: their lowest Premiership gate last season, the 17,719 they attracted for the October clash with Sale that was held on the same day that England took on South Africa in the World Cup semi-final at Stade de France, was more than the highest generated by any other club at their own ground with the exception of Bristol. Leicester used to argue against the cap, feeling that its levelling effect was achieved by dragging teams down rather than up, but the effects of the pandemic, which made clubs more reliant on their owners at a time when most of them were also feeling the squeeze, shut down that debate and even the Bears claim they will be spending below the cap next season. But if the club game does veer towards the elite, as seems inevitable given the greater amount of time the leading players will spend with their countries, Leicester will be up there because they have the infrastructure and the support – more than 22,000 turned up for the Tigers’ final match of the season against Exeter even though there was nothing riding on the result for their side.
The decision of New Zealand and South Africa, whose rivalry is the greatest historically in the sport and has been affected by the latter’s decision to leave Super Rugby, to resurrect long tours points to the way the game is heading. There is a sense of inevitability about it because Covid has heightened the need to generate income not just for today but the future, no more living from season to season.
But if the game does not generate greater income beyond inflationary rises (and again it has to be asked what CVC has done in that regard, and does it have to given that it will make a substantial return on its investments even if the sport’s turnover barely increases in real terms?), it is not the strong who will suffer.
The question above all is who is charting the direction of travel? There is a danger it will become every union for itself because the sport’s governance has still not jerked itself free from the amateur era.
