New World Rugby Calendar and World Cup format

The problem is many of the non 6 nations/rugby championship sides already play often enough against each other. Its far more games against the Irelands, England's, new zealands of this world that they need and his proposal doesn't help with that.

The sport needs to expand to grow. Some of the top unions are struggling financially so keeping games within those sides alone isn't a good thing. We need to get more teams up to a competitive level at the top tier. Closing off opportunities for tier 2/3 sides to play rugby championship sides and 6 nations sides won't develop the sport more or make world cup more competitive

agree, no consequence for poor perfomance , just elitist back slapping. As much as good performance should be rewarded , so should poor performance have consequence, regardless of what country that is - old habits die hard it seams.

Yeah I know that! Some of the top unions talk good game but don't ultimately want to do what's required to expand/progress the game

The argument has always been that less rest time would benefit England and France because of their resources. I think taking a rest week out is fine. But agree let's hope Paddy's weekend is still in calendar and it just starts a week later.

Exactly. France nearly learned that to their cost against Uruguay in the pools, though I think conditioning for the last quarter would probably always have won out there

Given the decline of union in key markets (Australia, England the most obvious in real trouble) it looks from the outside like the priorities may be misplaced. These plans look like shifting the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Did they not have 4 clubs go bust last year?

I thought it was 3.

Worchester was never a sustainable club and both Wasps and London Irish made terrible decisions regarding stadia in an attempt to cash in on the growth of the game. Victims of the games success not decline.

It always was very much a minority game in England and some clubs over extended themselves thinking they could become Premier League soccer level clubs and paid the price. But the minority sport is certainly less minority now and the national team and 6 Nations is well ingrained now the same way that happened here.

While I accept that it's very very unlikely that they will be relegated I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least a chance of it

I don't think the new structure is fully agreed yet to be fair to you

But even if Japan and Fiji were the only ones who could be relegated you could still potentially see two European teams take their spots. I accept this is also unlikely!

For arguments sake lets say Portugal and Georgia (the next highest ranked European teams today) get into the top division

Do they play in the same conference as the RC teams and have 6N teams playing away July games (nd home November games against European sides

France/Italy combined against new zraland South africa never would happen doubt any sides would have an interest in 8t. We need more games for sides outside of rugby championship and 6 nations not more games between these sides and certainly not any combined sides

Yeah I'd love nothing more than to see some T2 nations put their money where their mouths are and organise tours to the Southern Hemisphere in July or invite them to play them in November, like the others do. But instead they'd rather cry about not being included in the 6N, so meh to them

The 6N and RC form a part of this stupid Nations League concept

But they clearly don't from every description given so far. Unless you have proof to the contrary that nobody else has heard of which you are free to post here

I certainly found more reports saying the 6N and RC games will count towards this than I did that the 6N/RC teams couldn't be relegated (I only read that here) but I don't see how that could work without adding the additional teams into the RC, likely making it mirror the 6N format going forward.

I'll make my prediction here, the 11th and 12th teams will be Japan and the USA. If South Africa manage to beat Samoa tomorrow they'd nearly be able to swing calling it a unification across the men's and women's games but the Canadian and Argentinian women refuse to play ball, I wouldn't faint at them still trying to spin that though.

Then all that will be left for them to do is figure out how to schedule every tier 1 team to play in Saudi Arabia every year.

I actually like the concept of a regular global international league structure but the devil is in the detail and this one is already full of devil before we know all the detail. It seems perverse they managed to vote on something which appears to either be totally up in the air or at least they weren't able to publish the structure (and it doesn't appear to have leaked). I wonder just what exactly was voted on and what was just made up for an announcement and is yet to actually be decided/approved.