RFU Want 6 Nations Reduced to 6 weeks

First topic message reminder :

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39387032

Does anyone else think this is a bad idea, or is it just me?

BamBam wrote:

LordDowlais wrote:

No 7&1/2 wrote:What are the chances of a fan being able to pick up tickets for 3 consecutive matches anyway?

I was able to get tickets for every single Wales game in this years 6N.

Just need to know the right people.

God you're a bore, I'm sure you were one of the wallies with a daffodil on his head

No 7&1/2 wrote:But you said the rfu were doing rhis on behalf of the prl earlier david...what's their goal in this?

Their goal would appear to be limit anything that gets in the way of the club game. They don't seem to realise that it's the International games that bankrolls the clubs.

Well clearly the game needs both to work together. And for the overall goal of the global season. This is another positive step for me as the fallow weeks are a real pain as a fan who wants to see the rugby. I much prefer the current format over the previous as well. Would you want to go back to that?

The old system of two matches every fortnight (with one team resting) was not conducive to building a sporting spectacle - but was probably the correct solution for amateur players needing to take time off work.

If the other Unions don't agree they will vote against it as is their right, however I wonder if the RFU is floating this one out because of future financial considerations - how long has the current TV deal got to go?

Six Nations: Scotland will not agree to six-week tournament - Mark Dodson - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39448393

Scotland don't want it apparently player safety and the fact they don't think they have the squad.

No 7&1/2 wrote:Six Nations: Scotland will not agree to six-week tournament - Mark Dodson - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39448393

Scotland don't want it apparently player safety and the fact they don't think they have the squad.

It is an absolute non story this.

The RFU want a shorter 6N, since it will obviously be of benefit for them. The SRU don't want it shorter since it will benefit them to keep it in the current format.

I appreciate there is a move to try and create a global season, but it's the saturation of club games and club competitions that is the greatest barrier, not the 6N.

There is the wider thought it may actually get some increased interest ie audience as well. I wanted them 6 nations comiittee et al to throw a trial of kicking it off in April tbh. The mess on with bonus points but think that would have been interesting.

How does player release work now for those not based in home clubs or with release clauses?

There used to be all manner of drama around the window only being for the 5 weekends matches were all staged on, has that been resolved now?

Gooseberry wrote:How does player release work now for our future caps based in SA and the pacific islands?

Just stop poaching them and you'll be fine.

mikey_dragon wrote:

Gooseberry wrote:How does player release for all the English Wales players who have gone back to England to play a higher level of club rugby work now?

Just stop poaching them and you'll be fine.

Joke poacher

Ye may take our homes, take us out of Europe and take our Freedom! ..but yay'll never take our extra week!

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:

No 7&1/2 wrote:Six Nations: Scotland will not agree to six-week tournament - Mark Dodson - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/39448393

Scotland don't want it apparently player safety and the fact they don't think they have the squad.

It is an absolute non story this.

The RFU want a shorter 6N, since it will obviously be of benefit for them. The SRU don't want it shorter since it will benefit them to keep it in the current format.

I appreciate there is a move to try and create a global season, but it's the saturation of club games and club competitions that is the greatest barrier, not the 6N.

Absolutely right - the sport is becoming increasingly attritional: hits are harder, medics are more professional, and we're finally taking head injuries seriously (Mr Novez excepted). This simply can't be married up with an expectation for players to play more often. The only solution is to have larger international squads, thereby damaging the club game even more during international periods - Glasgow would have to put out the Hawick Ladies 2nd XV against a Munster, who would themselves be putting out the Garryowen Under 16 C team!

Jokes aside, the only way to ensure a team can cope with a shorter tournament with less recovery time is to increase the squad sizes. Is that really what we want?

RuggerRadge2611 wrote:

It is an absolute non story this.

The RFU want a shorter 6N, since it will obviously be of benefit for them. The SRU don't want it shorter since it will benefit them to keep it in the current format.

I appreciate there is a move to try and create a global season, but it's the saturation of club games and club competitions that is the greatest barrier, not the 6N.

I completely agree on the non-story comment, and also that the saturation that is the issue (though you can argue the toss over whether it's the increased amount of club or international that is to blame).

But, the more I think on this the harder I find it to see this as particularly beneficial to the RFU. As things stand almost all teams play 3/4 matches in a row in the autumn - so it's not like the players can't manage it. I would have thought that the main beneficiaries would be the teams who have to release some or all of their players back to clubs on the 'rest' weekends - this doesn't apply to England because of the agreement between PRL and RFU, and the RFU's insistence on only picking players playing at home. The only real benefit to the RFU (in my opinion) is that they could potentially barter down how much they are paying PRL for player access next time they have that negotiation - if they are only paying for 2 weeks extra player access (1 week before and 1 rest week) rather than 3. Clearly they'd prefer it or they wouldn't be asking, but I'd have thought the biggest beneficiaries would be the French (unless they now have a player access deal as well) or Italians (unless they can get more of their players back playing club rugby in Italy).

But like you say, it's a bit of a non-story really.

As a season ticket holder unlike most on here, my team have played, amongst others, Saracens, Wasps, Exeter and Northampton during the AIs and 6N. Short changed doesn't begin to cover the views on the terraces.

Also presumably Pro12 fans believe it acceptable that their final is a week before the the first game in NZ, as part of player welfare at the tail end of a long season - which is about to get longer for the benefit of SH Unions.

I can't think of one player injured during the 6N who benefited from a seven week tournament ?

None of this is perfect in a crowded season - with clubs providing players to France & England - and Tests funding players for Union owned sides.

Unions concentrating players into elite teams and then bemoaning a small player pool is an irony beyond words.
Fair play, trying to have your cake and then eat it is an aspiration for all Unions.

Recwatcher16 wrote:

I can't think of one player injured during the 6N who benefited from a seven week tournament ?

Sexton?  I'm sure his final winning game (beneficial to Ireland's confidence going forward) was aided by the two non-playing weekend recuperation periods after all the nice attention he had been getting?  Or don't we want to see the best players from the best sides playing their best?

Sexton wasn't injured in the first 6N game Secret.

Injured is a relative term Rec.  I'm sure he and the coach liked the idea of having the two weekends off to stall the cumulative build up of hits that he (and I'm sure many players in all other teams) gets per game.  
I'm sure he'd still walk onto the field if one of the weekends became a play weekend but that doesn't take away from the fact that bangs and bumps are better off getting two weekend breaks rather than one over such a hard-bitten contest of top NH teams throwing themselves at each other.  

International is a step up in intensity.  Nobody disputes that.  So...respect the players, all of them, who play it hard for the 6N event to showcase a sport that then can actually lead casuals into the club game?  It's not much to ask - that extra week.

I actually don't mind the current format but some of the false wailing on here is poor. Bear in mind that many injuries occur during training weekends anyway.

If a shorter tournament generates more excitement (it would) and hence more TV money (probably) to fund Union top down business models. Then tunes might change but presumably Ritchie and his underhand motives haven't progressed that far.

Oh God, Rec...you just mentioned the dreaded "more money business model" argument.... shiver me timbers..... We'll leave it there. I think we don't need to go down that avenue again as we know each other's strong opinions on that particular issue.

What will be will be, I suppose, come April.

I would have thought you would be pleased with that idea, with the constant pleading of poverty.

Just for the record Australia played five tests last autumn on the trot, all away from home against all four home nations plus France without so much as a passing comment on their itinerary - but then I guess they are geared up to win world cups.

Recwatcher16 wrote:I would have thought you would be pleased with that idea, with the constant pleading of poverty.

Just for the record Australia played five tests last autumn on the trot, all away from home against all four home nations plus France without so much as a passing comment on their itinerary - but then I guess they are geared up to win world cups.

Good for Australia, geared to win World Cups  - 3 wins 2 losses in a AI season with no Title to fight for (another good dry run test on how they'd hold up under intense WC conditions.  Good for them).  I wonder what two weekends off in between might have achieved for them?  Huh?

P.S.  I don't plead poverty, Rec - that's a few of the Welsh posters who do that.  I'm the one that says PRL is unashamedly greedy for control and for the extra extra bucks (they never have enough of either   )...there's a different emphasis there.

So the WRU, along with the SRU have declared that player welfare takes priotity over the number of weeks for the Six Nations.
Fair enough, although the four Test games in a row immediately followed by euro pool games held in the autumn doesn't seem to be an issue for WRU and their players.
I guess we'll just gloss over that inconsistency.

The NH season remains incoherent and the forthcoming WR announcements doesn't look like promising anything significantly better.

But is that what I've been watching for all these decades?  Something incoherent?  

Nah, it's a nice publicity angle to attach a desire for change to - actually quite like that favourite political tool that is used across the world by the party in opposition: "The country needs change".  Oh it does, does it?  So you don't have to have any policies we might agree with.  All you have to do is ask to be elected because you are not what has gone before.  ___  Neat.

I've understood our seasons to date.  I've never felt dizzy or disorientated.  A bit of League, a bit of Europe, a bit of International, a bit of League, a bit of International, a bit of Europe.  Actually, it's a nice kind of freeformistic variety.  I think too many critics live in a world of too many officiously pedantic spreadsheets and probably secretly love the idea of straightened bananas

George Fords moanimng about it being too tough. But he is a bit of a girly back. Im sure a real man like Itoje would be able to play all 6 games as lock and backrow in the same day, and still have the enregy to pose topless with John Inverdale.

Im sure a real man like Itoje would be able to play all 6 games as lock and backrow in the same day, and still have the enregy to pose topless with John Inverdale.

I'd pay money to see that - Inverdale topless.

Sweet!

I'd pay good money to ban it.

I'd pay good money to ban it.

Methinks thou protesteth too much, I mean SF, the Mighty Inverdale sitting there without a hat - the juices just have to flow!!

Oh dear God.... time for my late lunch!

France are actually pushing for the tournament to be reduced to 5 Weeks.  So I think the competition will probably alter with France and England starting the tournament a week later than everyone else. With the France and England game being played on the first rest weekend.

It does seem there is room for a compromise if England and France want to move their game to a rest weekend, to keep their clubs happy.  

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Six Nations Tournament
Until then, the competition that brings together the six best European nations takes place over seven weeks. The technical team proposes to have the Tournament disputed over five consecutive weeks, so as to limit the round trips between the French team and the clubs, and thus avoid a player being aligned in Top 14 between two matches of the VI Nations (and is not injured, for example). "It must be condensed over five weeks," says the former captain of the XV of France. This year, clubs like us (Stade Français) or Toulouse were the suppliers of the XV de France during the Tournament and were wronged. "
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Not the auld "We woz robbed" excuse?

Well I never. The old movies are still the best ones.

Recwatcher16 wrote:As a season ticket holder unlike most on here, my team have played, amongst others, Saracens, Wasps, Exeter and Northampton during the AIs and 6N. Short changed doesn't begin to cover the views on the terraces.

Wouldn't that be a benefit to Bath? Those teams would be missing large swathes of their first teams?

Bath would be missing Joseph, which is a loss. Watson was injured anyway for the AIs and part of the 6N. Falataeu has been perenially broken it seems too. But he was an international when you signed him so you knew what you were getting into with that. Ford is a loss of course but I bet teams would love to be able to call upon a player with his experience as your back up.

I could be forgetting more, but surely you have it better, or at least no worse than the teams you mention?

Or are you talking from an exhibition point of view, ie you never got to see the big names come to the rec? But then, I'd rather my team won, than I got to see some rugby celebrities.

I think the gripe is more that you rarely get ton see full strength sides in the Jeff until the season end.

Changes to the 6 nations length won't affect that much for EPS players, they still have an agreed limit on games per season .

The French clubs though seem less concerned with player welfare and more concerned with not being asked to rest internationals on fallow weekends.

Gooseberry wrote:I think the gripe is more that you rarely get ton see full strength sides in the Jeff until the season end.

Changes to the 6 nations length won't affect that much for EPS players, they still have an agreed limit on games per season .

The French clubs though seem less concerned with player welfare and more concerned with not being asked to rest internationals on fallow weekends.

Change the Aviva Premiership then. 22/24 games is close to the number of games you want to play a season, that's without 6 to 9 European games and up to 13 Internationals some years.

I think 12 Internationals and 15 European games is about right, with about 12 domestic games for non-international players.

robbo277 wrote:

Gooseberry wrote:I think the gripe is more that you rarely get ton see full strength sides in the Jeff until the season end.

Changes to the 6 nations length won't affect that much for EPS players, they still have an agreed limit on games per season .

The French clubs though seem less concerned with player welfare and more concerned with not being asked to rest internationals on fallow weekends.

Change the Aviva Premiership then. 22/24 games is close to the number of games you want to play a season, that's without 6 to 9 European games and up to 13 Internationals some years.

I think 12 Internationals and 15 European games is about right, with about 12 domestic games for non-international players.

This is part of the wider proposal which includes changing the dates of all comeptitions and having what amounts to a 10 month season.

Theres a strong case to drop the Jeff to 10 clubs though, and also have a much reduced second tier which is made up of clubs capable of sustaining professionalism rather than the hodge podge of bankrupticies and semi pros it is currently.
The clubs will keep on pushing back on that though, as well a sa big chunk of fans.

Again the situatuion is worse in France where they are constabntly trying to find more fixtures rather than rationalising what they have.


Fact checking back ... the agreed limit on EPS playewrs is 32 games person season, and garaunteed 10 week off season. They averaged just 23 last season ( although I believe that starts counting post world cup and includes long term injured players)

Well I guess it's better if England and France start a week later than the other 4 teams, and miss the first rest weekend.

Shifty wrote:Well I guess it's better if England and France start a week later than the other 4 teams, and miss the first rest weekend.

Stonking idea Shifty - everyone's a winner. Thr PRL and LNR get an extra week to pacify their season tickets, while the other nations keep both rest weeks, and the TV companies have six weekends rather than five to flog advertising.

wrong thread!

Rugby Fan wrote:Match 1 in Paris: Samoa beat Fiji 17-19

Match 5 in Paris: Scotland beat South Africa 12-19

Match 10 in Paris: Samoa beat Australia 14-21

Samoa will qualify from the pool, so now either Fiji or Australia will miss out.

Match 14: Scotland beat Canada 19-26

This makes the Canada vs South Africa fixture a key match. Canada just won their first sevens title while South Africa lead the overall table. One of those sides will miss out on Cup qualifications.

Wrong thread?