Fiji’s future in World League could be in hands of the Six Nations

There is not much, you’d imagine, that could unite two such prickly characters as Johnny Sexton and Owen Farrell, so congratulations of a sort go to World Rugby, whose plans for a new World League have not only united the two stand-offs in complete condemnation of the idea but pretty much every other player who has voiced an opinion as well.

Fiji have been excluded from plans for a World League. Picture: Pascal Guyot/AFP/Getty Images

The game’s governing body will doubtless be hosting the next Donald Trump/Kim Jong-Un summit in Dublin, offering at least one thing that the two leaders can agree on.

The World League is the brainchild of Agustin Pichot, pictured, the vice-chairman of World Rugby, who is seen as a breath of fresh air by some and as a self-serving politician by others. In Argentina he is widely assumed to have designs on the top job… of running the country, rather than World Rugby.

His plan takes the European teams from the Six Nations and the four teams from the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship (plus Japan and the USA to even up the numbers) and puts them into a play-off every year with semi-final, final and a winner.

Agustin Pichot, the vice-Chairman of World Rugby. Picture: Andrew Redington/Getty Images

The World League is to take place every year that doesn’t hold a World Cup and, according to reports, it could require successful sides playing five matches in five weeks at the tail end of the southern hemisphere season in November.

A broadcast partner is already lined up and the resulting deal is said to be worth an eye popping £7 million per nation per annum, which is good apples, especially for Australian Rugby and the South African Rugby Union, which are both perpetually skint and struggle to keep their best players in the country.

The plans were said to be backed “unanimously” by the chief executives of the participating countries (including Scotland) which was only appropriate because those same plans were met with unanimous hostility by the players who are expected to drag their broken bodies through ever more gruelling games.

The organisation representing the workers, the International Rugby Players’ Council with president Sexton backed by nine of the ten top-ranked Test captains, called World Rugby “out of touch” while Farrell went further.

“This proposal shows no signs of improving an already difficult situation,” said the Englishman. “Players are definitely open to discussing a new global season but what we develop has to work with the club game in order to reduce conflict, deal with player release issues and make sure their welfare is looked after. The proposal presented to us at the moment doesn’t seem to have considered this properly.”

World Rugby immediately pushed back. They insisted that the players had been kept in the loop throughout and, because of that, called their reaction “surprising”. Then the game’s governing body reiterated their favourite mantra, “our commitment to welfare matters is unwavering”. A bit like an illiterate peasant in the Dark Ages recounting the Latin litany, it slips off the tongue so easily you are not entirely convinced they know what it really means.

Either World Rugby’s boss Brett Gosper, Pichot and all those chief executives are inflating the importance they place upon player welfare, with a large cheque dangled under their noses, or the top players in world rugby are 
crying wolf?

I know who I am inclined to believe.

The news broke in the New Zealand Herald which quickly made its opinion known: “Shameless rugby bosses have just killed the game,” ran the headline.

The report stated that there would be no relegation/promotion in or out of this Top 12 World League which could leave the Pacific Islands, Georgia, Russia, Brazil et al high and dry and not for the first time, you might add.

The exclusion of Fiji would be especially shameful, they are ranked ninth in the world compared to Japan (11th), the USA (13th) and Italy (15th), but The Scotsman understands that the plans include multiple leagues with promotion and relegation, although that idea that could still be scuppered if the Six Nations insist on ring-fencing their competition.

Any block to promotion and relegation is going to come from self-interested unions rather than World Rugby.

Neither the USA or Japan is remotely ready to play the All Blacks or Boks on a regular basis, which will only undermine the integrity of the Rugby Championship. If the Six Nations is just the prelude to another competition then Europe’s golden goose will have been sacrificed by World Rugby in a well meaning attempt to help the south. And any annual competition involving all the big names (except Fiji) is sure to undermine the integrity/attractiveness of the World Cup.

One insider insisted that nothing was set in stone and insisted that a host of details were still be to hammered out. Given this furious response, we can expect a raft of changes before any proposal goes before World Rugby’s council for approval in May but mere tinkering won’t solve the 
manifest problems of the 
original plan