Nine Nations?

evilhomer

Nine nations proposed!

A new "nine nations" tournament has been proposed!!

It will pitt, Ireland, England, France, Scotland, Wales, Italy, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa against each other!!!

it is proposed to run two years before a world cup.

the nations would be split into 3 groups of three and the winner of the groups would go on to play each other

I like the sound of this would definetly make things more interesting the the friendlies we have most years with the southern hemisphere teams and will definetly improve the standards of rugby at the highest level if it goes ahead!!!

mike65

Not this again! If they do it the World Cup will be ended through lack of interest.

Mike.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

GreenHell

Why don't they just get the winning nation from the 6 nations and tri nations play off instead of making a joke out of holding a world cup.

uberwolf

yeah, i agree with the posts so far, it would make the world cup a fairly pointless affair. It would stunt the exposure for the game in the developing nations and at least three of the teams in that mix wouldn't have a chance in the shake up so would they even merit inclusion?

If its really necessary how about 1st in 6 nations vs 1st in tri nations, 2nd vs 2nd and 3rd vs 3rd. 3 games consecutive days, great wknd of rugby and probaly wouldn't impact on WC. or maybe not

Jilm

'tis a daft idea, I'd rather see the 3N expanded to include Argentina and maybe a combined Pacfic Island side (oh wait, maybe they have one of those already, the ABs ). Hell, even Japan is being considered.

At the moment the 3N is pretty much centred around the bledisloe cup, it badly needs spicing up. New Zealand is the major stumbling block, the NZRU like the idea of being a big fish in a small pond too much.

MarVeL

Can't see much of a point in this myself. As others have said it would distract from the World Cup and would hinder the development of the smaller (smaller than Ireland?!?!?) countries. A 6n champ vs 3n (preferably 5N but lets not be greedy) played on neutral ground at a different venue every year might be interesting

leeroybrown

Aside from the obvious issues of devaluing the world cup and removing the major northern and southern hemisphere tournaments, the sheer amounts of travel required to get two teams to a venue in some cases is enormous. Australia or New Zealand are ~20 hours of travel just to play one match.

Perhaps an annual final played between the victors of the two respective tournaments or a similar arrangements would be a suitable comprimise. Even at that you run into massive travel difficulties before you even consider the issue of home advantage.

keano_afc

Useless idea, it would completely devalue the World Cup.

Big Ears

They should have the winners of the 6 nations (Best team from northern hemisphere play the winners of a Five nations : New Zealand, Austrailia, South Africa, Argentina and Somoa (Best of southern hemisphere ) .

In a 2 legged affair , whoever has the bigger aggregate score at the end wins whatever , but then again this would devalue the World cup and would make things hard for developing nations trying to improve )



I would like there to be continental tournaments that would replace the tri nations and six-nations

Europe , Oceana , America (as a whole not north and south ) , Africa and Asia .

GreenHell

Don't forget the super power cup USA, Russia, Japan and Canada I think.

Like to see the Pumas and the island nations included in the tri nations.

thesecret7

crap idea.. the world cups needs to be developed!!

Hairy Homer

Seems to be a pretty unanymous view that the idea is a load of horse dung and I would not deviate from that consensus.

This is the sort of tripe business-led decision making that has reduced the Soccer Premiership in most countries into a two-team or single team procession. Who do you support? Arsenal or Man Utd? Rangers or Celtic? Who else is there to support in Norway apart from Rosenborg? Or Porto in Portugal? (Whatever happened to Benfica?)

These gits clearly think that nine teams is enough to attract the attention and loyalty of every rugby player in the planet. They probably think. Hey, half of Ireland, not to measure nmost of South East Asia supports Man Utd. Why can't we get the whole world to channel their affections to these nine teams? Or at least to the top two or three teams within that league.

The challenge with professionalism is how you make a business out of the sport without turning the sport into a business. If you're going to support a multinational conglomerate like Man Utd or Arsenal, you may as well support Microsoft!!!!!!

Go Bill!!! What about that share price performance!!!! And can you name another company that has a Web services strategy to match 'ours'? (That's ours in the same sense that Man Utd supporters around the globe refer to 'us') And as for that European antitrust decision!!! No way ref!!! Are you David Elleray's secret lover????? 'Who's your father, who's your father, who's your father referee. Haven't got one, haven't got one you're a etc etc etc etc

[/rant]

evilhomer

Hairy Homer!!

Did you take your chill pill this morning??

Hairy Homer

What did you want?

'Oh what a good idea!'?

I can do chilled. Just not when some bloody 'business development manager' wants to muck around with the object of much of my affections.

Peace man

:-)

spanner

Originally posted by GreenHell
Don't forget the super power cup USA, Russia, Japan and Canada I think.

Like to see the Pumas and the island nations included in the tri nations.

i agree with you totally. agrentina is a good rugby nation but it needs more competive matches to raise the standard. i think agrentina should be in the tri nations and even if they could put a team into the super 12s that also would be very good.

all you have to do is to look to italy and see how much the standard of the game has increased since they joined the 5 nations