Scotland will welcome a rest this weekend after their gruelling encounter against France in Paris, during which four players sustained concussion and Greig Laidlaw limped off after 24 minutes with an ankle injury that ended his Six Nations Championship. Three others had to be replaced because of injuries – so what shape would the side be in were the third round taking place this week, as has been suggested during the debate on the global calendar?
The Scots would have six days to prepare for Wales, who themselves had a short turnaround for last weekend’s match against England after opening in Rome on the Sunday, a match that cost them the wing George North and left Dan Biggar able to train only on the day before the match against the champions.
The argument for the Six Nations to be played over successive weekends is that it would free up space later in the season, mean it could kick off in the latter part of February and replicate the World Cup, when the semi-finalists will play seven matches in six weeks or less. It is being championed by Premiership Rugby, which, under its agreement with the Rugby Football Union, cannot recall England players on the two fallow weekends during the championship.
The idea is backed by the former England coach Sir Clive Woodward who, before the start of this year’s Six Nations, described the tournament as a closed shop that only served those on the inside. Saying it needed an upgrade, he called for a five-week tournament from next year (the fixtures are yet to be announced), saying: “The Six Nations should replicate the final stages of the World Cup, so that when European nations get to the closing stages of that tournament, they are not caught unawares. A tournament played on five consecutive weekends would simply be better for the Six Nations.”
The Rugby Championship takes a week longer than the Six Nations as sides play six matches on a home and away basis. It is played in three blocks of two weekends and has two fallow weekends. It does not serve as a direct comparison because of the considerably greater travelling distances.
All matches in the Rugby Championship, though, are played on a Saturday. Were the Six Nations to be played in one go, would six-day turnarounds, especially after the first couple of rounds, enhance the tournament? As has already been seen this year, England have the strength in depth to cope with injury problems that wipe out half their pack, but the Celtic nations and Italy cannot.
A five-week tournament would be to England’s advantage, although would Premiership Rugby modify its agreement with the RFU regarding the call-up of players into the England squad if there were injuries in one or two positions? The Celts have the advantage of being able to add to their squads at will, although they lose control of their exiled players during the fallow weekends.
North is at Northampton this week, who have a fixture at Newcastle they need to win to remain in contention for a top-four finish: defeat could leave them 15 points adrift with seven rounds left. In that sense, removing the fallow weekends would have a benefit for Wales and Scotland, but overall they would likely suffer.
While teams have to play more matches in a similar period during the World Cup, they can often have two games against weaker opponents, when they are able to rotate their squad. And they have three months to prepare for the tournament rather than the couple of weeks they have for the Six Nations, when teams go into camp on the back of two European rounds. Saracens’ England internationals had full-on encounters with Toulon and the Scarlets before joining up with their international team-mates and a five-week Six Nations would require a greater lead-in period and a break for the players at the end.
Would it make a meaningful difference to the shape of the European season other than to keep the cameras rolling? When World Rugby started the talks over a global calendar, it said its main aim was player welfare. A five-week Six Nations would lead to sides hoping they drew Italy on the third weekend so they could – as England will at Twickenham in the next round – use the fixture to rotate.
After two rounds, this Six Nations is the most closely contested of this decade, with France and Scotland competitive again. Excluding Italy, four matches have produced winning margins of five, three, five and six points. England are the only unbeaten side – but they were trailing France and Wales with 10 minutes to go. A rest weekend now would seem a better guarantee of that being perpetuated than weakened sides being fielded: with concussed players needing to be symptom-free for six days and Laidlaw out, Scotland would have to make at least five changes.
An alternative is to look at the championship itself. It is 17 years since Italy joined, but recent results in the Six Nations show they are not keeping pace: they have conceded 40 points or more in eight of their last 14 matches. Scotland have done so twice in that period and France once.
A reversion to the old Five Nations, backed up by a second division, would be a way of playing the tournament over five weeks with the two matches each round scheduled on Saturdays. Every team would have a free weekend, although two, the ones who sat out the opening and final rounds, would play their games in one block.
It won’t happen, not so much because of what it would do for the Italian game (Italy are 14th in the world rankings, two places below Georgia) but because it would mean the loss of a home match every two years for the other five, on top of television getting fewer matches. Welfare or fare well?
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