Rugby's elite in talks over new ring-fenced world championship
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World Rugby’s proposed 12-team Nations Championship was abandoned in June, however, according to a report by Matt Hughes in the Dailymail, the major nations are keen to build on the success of the World Cup.
The World Cup generated record revenues and television viewing figures and the major nations want to create more opportunities for the leading teams to play each other.
The idea also comes after England and New Zealand played just twice in the last five years including last month’s World Cup semi-final and there is appetite on all sides to look at creating a new league system similar to cricket’s World Test Championship that launched earlier this year.
Sportsmail report says that any new competition would be less demanding on the players than World Rugby's Nations Cup idea and would not involve every country playing each other every season.
Instead, points would be awarded for each Test arranged on a bilateral basis between unions, creating a league table that would build to a series of play-off matches to determine the world championship winner.
Another difference from the World Rugby's model is that the competition would be ring-fenced, with entry limited to the Six Nations and Sanzar unions (South Africa, New Zealand and Australia) plus Japan and Fiji.
