Gregor Townsend floats idea of Scotland only playing England, Wales and Ireland in Six Nations

National coach concedes organisers will need a ‘narrow’ focus if rugby is to resume any time soon

Gregor Townsend says Glasgow and Edinburgh might need to only play against each other when the Pro14 gets back under way. Picture: David Rogers/Getty Images

Gregor Townsend’s always bright outlook on life, and a certainty that rugby will be back and, at some point in the future, to how we all know and love it, is tempered with a dose of realism.

The Scotland coach doesn’t shy away from the seriousness of the current situation, for wider society more than sport, the ever-mounting scheduling headache and accepts that the short-mid term future of an intense contact sport like rugby could come with a “narrower” focus.

In a developing situation there has been rays of hope in the past week, with union and league codes looking to get going in New Zealand and Australia next month and encouraging news about antibody testing amid the frantic search for a vaccine that can put a lid on this insidious, deadly and ruinous Covid-19 pandemic.

As things stand, however, a long haul ahead still seems a fair assumption and Townsend believes that could have ramifications for next year’s Six Nations Championship, never mind the one that is currently locked in stasis with a number of fixtures – including Scotland’s closer in Wales – unfulfilled.

“Scotland playing England, Wales and potentially Ireland,” is one possibility floated by Townsend to address the issue over travel restrictions between countries like Italy and France, who have been nearly as badly hit as the UK and have their own government regulations in place.

Below the Test arena, Townsend accepts too that the future sustainability of a pro-club competition like the Guinness Pro14, which spans Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Italy and South Africa, faces an uncertain future, even if the current indefinitely suspended season can be cobbled to a close.

“It could [start with] Glasgow and Edinburgh playing against each other, then maybe players just below that level competing against each other. Who knows?” he added.

“I would hope that club rugby would be able to return and international rugby would be able to return, and if the format needs to be narrowed then we just have to adapt to that.

“I think everybody is planning to make sure that the club competitions we are currently involved in are the ones that we come back to, and the international fixtures we are due to play, even if the summer tour is postponed or delayed, we get to play them and we get to play our [Six Nations] fixture against Wales and the November Tests, but that might not happen and there is discussions around what the alternative might be to keep our sport in a healthy situation, and what international games and club fixtures we can play if those previous ones can’t go ahead for whatever reason.”

Townsend rejected the idea of Scotland pulling up the drawbridge completely at club level and developing some kind of fully domestic competition which mixes full-time professionals from Glasgow Warriors and Edinburgh with the part-time pros of the curtailed inaugural Super 6.

“I wouldn’t have thought someone like Jamie Ritchie [for example – 
the young Edinburgh back-row 
who has been world-class for the past year or so] would have got as much out of that,” said the national coach.

“I think the guys who are at semi-pro playing guys at a higher level would get a lot out of that. What you want for your players is them playing at the highest level they can play at, so Edinburgh playing in the Pro14 and going into play-offs brings the best out of guys like Jamie Ritchie.

“International players playing other international teams – we were due to play South Africa and New Zealand in the next few months – brings the best out of them.

“[A domestic pro/part-time competition] wouldn’t be the ideal situation for our top pro players.”

When rugby does get going again it is clearly going to be behind closed doors and under strict guidelines for some time. For what is such a social sport in which the big internationals are as much about the occasion and “the weekend”, that will be tough to adjust to.

Townsend has played in electric atmospheres at nearly all the iconic stadiums around the rugby world but “while not ideal”, he is adamant that if that is how it has to be it is better to play than not. Players in the peak of their relatively short careers should play if it is deemed safe.

Asked if he had ever played a competitive match behind closed doors, Townsend said with a grin: “I could say some of the games we had for the Borders [Reivers] were behind closed doors.

“I do remember watching Edinburgh v Castres at Murrayfield [a Heineken Champions Cup game in December 2010], played on a Monday afternoon after it was called off because of snow and ice one weekend.

“I was in a box watching it and supporters weren’t allowed in that day. So that would have been similar to what might happen in the future, with only a certain number of people allowed in.

“It will be different if it happens, but life is different. This situation has never happened before in our lifetime, so we just have to adjust to whatever format rugby is in when it returns.”

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