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World Rugby’s desired world league, the Nations Championship is in danger. Recent meetings held in Europe to agree to the terms of the competition did not go well for World Rugby, reports Fermín de la Calle. for Revista 22.
de la Calle writes that a meeting on Tuesday (April 16) revealed a disturbing picture for European nations. Present at the meeting were World Rugby Chairman Bill Beaumont, and CEO Brett Gosper as were representatives from Europe, and Africa.
Beaumont began by acknowledging that Europe would be the worse-off region with the proposed economic agreement that is to be set-up under the proposal. By Europe, the World Rugby Chairman is not referring to the Six Nations unions but, rather, all of the others.
With the Six Nations have declined the possibility of promotion and relegation World Rugby’s proposed Nations Championship would see no opportunity for either promotion or relegation until 2030. This would mean the creation of an intercontinental annual competition in which Georgia, Germany, Romania, Russia, Spain, among others, would be excluded for ten years.
In financial terms this means that England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales would all be making annual profits from the Nations Cup of ten times that of Tier 2 unions. The proposal would mean 7.5 million euros for the Six Nations unions compared to 750,000 euros for the Tier 2.
Tier 3 unions are in an even graver danger as de la Calle notes that Tier 3 unions would not gain a single euro until they are promoted to the second tier of the Nations Championship.
Upon learning of this information Georgia vehemently opposed World Rugby’s proposed model. They told World Rugby that it would mean the death of the sport in their country in three years with the government set to remove all funding for the sport.
Although Georgia is firmly opposed to the Nations Championship there are, nonetheless, unions within Europe which are in favor including Belgium, Germany, and Spain. Yet the overall attitude from Europe is on the side of Georgia with the project not being popular overall.
