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Global rugby competition touted
By DAVID LONG - Sunday News | Sunday, 24 February 2008
Global rugby competition touted - Rugby news & coverage - Stuff.co.nz
A global winners-take-all championship game is being planned by rugby bosses, Sunday News can reveal.
The IRB are backing a money-spinning competition between the Tri-nations and Six Nations teams and the rugby world's top CEOs will be asked to give their approval on the deal in Hong Kong this week when they gather for the colony's sevens tournament.
IRB vice chairman Bill Beaumont confirmed the move, telling Sunday News: "We are looking at an inter-hemisphere trophy competition which rewards the best against the best.
"There's a meeting of the tier-one chief executives in Hong Kong where that is certainly an agenda item that everyone will be looking at."
Beaumont a former England and Lions captain said he and other top brass had grown tired of meaningless tests played during the June and November windows where coaches fielded second-string teams.
"To me, playing for your country has to be the ultimate," he said.
"I want to go to an international match not knowing who's going to win and too often in the past I've gone to a game knowing one team is going to win easily and we've got to get away from that.
"The major thing to come out of Woking (the IRB's global forum last November) was that the European season will finish at the end of May and that we've got to get back to a situation that when test matches are being played you've got the best against the best."
The IRB are keen on a shortlist of plans for the June and November windows. This will include a series format which would give ranking points to existing matches which culminate in a grand final. The other is a 12-team pool format run over two years between World Cups where each country will play the other nations in its pool home and away, with the winners of the pools playing in a final.
NZRU CEO Steve Tew said he would go to Hong Kong with an open mind.
"All we can really say at this stage is it's certainly very encouraging the work that was discussed and being done in Woking has continued," Tew told Sunday News.
"There are three or four options designed to link the northern and southern hemisphere test matches to try to provide a little more meaning to those games. We only received those in the last day or so and we're going through those now.
"The CEOs group is not a decision-making forum, it's a consultation," he added. "So we'll go up there and enter into a discussion with those guys and I'm sure everyone will have some ideas to share."
Meanwhile, Tew rubbished comments in the Kiwi media that the Woking forum was a waste of time.
"We were pleasantly encouraged by what was achieved up there. If nothing else was achieved we had everyone in a room discussing some of the issues and that's always helpful.
"But we went further than that. We got agreement that test rugby should have primacy, that the English and French seasons would finish by the end of May from 2009, that the northern hemisphere clubs would be required to release their players for 11 tests a year.
"We think a lot was achieved and as the meeting in Hong Kong proves next weekend, work has continued and dialogue is ongoing."
As Tew and his Australian counterpart John O'Neill will both be in Hong Kong, it would be the perfect opportunity to officially announce the test between the All Blacks and Wallabies in the city en route to Europe for the end-of-season tour.
Tew says that announcement may, or may not happen.
"We've still got work to do on that Hong Kong game," he said. "But we're keen to get this stuff nailed as soon as possible."