All Blacks skipper Ardie Savea reacts during last year’s test victory over Scotland. Photo / Photosport
Maybe they are right, but we are five months from the first game being played and already there is enough reason to wonder if the Nations Championship will quietly be shelved once its existing commercial agreements expire.
The first inauspicious happening came in January when the French said they would again not allow anyone involved in their club final to be available for the opening game – against the All Blacks in Christchurch.
There was outrage in New Zealand last year when the French imposed the same ban around the club final and didn’t bring a handful of other leading players to these shores.
Everyone thought that was a one-off – the last time the French would so overtly and disdainfully treat the international game like that. Surely the Nations Championship would have secured agreements and commitments about country’s selecting their best players – but apparently not.
All 12 countries involved have hailed the Nations Championship as a financial saviour – a bright, shiny new product with the ability to transform international rugby’s commercial revenues by driving higher fan interest – and it has failed to clear the first hurdle.
But the French opt-out is small cheese in comparison with the way the integrity of the competition has been damaged by pressuring Fiji and Japan into giving up their right to play home games.
Fiji, it has been revealed, will play their “home” games in the UK this July, hosting Wales in Wales, England in England and Scotland in Scotland.
On one level, this is to be commended as it will at least enable Fiji to financially profit from playing at sizeable venues (the 28,000-capacity Cardiff City Stadium, the 52,000-capacity Hill Dickinson Stadium in Liverpool and the 67,500-capacity Murrayfield).
All Blacks Du’Plessis Kirifi, Scott Barrett and Josh Lord prepare for a scrum against Wales last year, in Cardiff. Photo / SmartFrame
It will be raining cash if these seats are filled or even mostly filled, and having seen Fiji and the other Pacific Islands treated so poorly over the past two decades, it takes a cold heart to begrudge this sort of game-changing windfall.
But that said, this decision to allow Fiji to play home games in the UK and benefit from the proceeds is only happening because it suits the Six Nations and is enormously beneficial to them.
Fiji may be the financial beneficiaries of these games, but they are effectively additional home tests for Wales, England and Scotland, as the stadiums will be filled with their fans.
More significantly, this arrangement significantly reduces the travel burden for Wales, England and Scotland – and illustrates the core issue the Nations Championship has faced.
The truth is that Fiji and Japan were invited in to make up the numbers and create an even split between Northern and Southern Hemisphere representatives (albeit Japan is geographically in the north, it is considered rugby-wise to be in the south).
Twelve teams were needed to interest the broadcasters and potential sponsors, as working with 10 – the Six Nations, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Argentina – didn’t organically create an obvious format, given the available calendar slots.
If that suggestion raises hackles in executive-land, it shouldn’t, because the undeniable evidence that Fiji and Japan are making up the numbers sits with their continued exclusion from the Rugby Championship.
Also, who can explain why it is that only Fiji and Japan have been asked to compromise their home-game arrangements to make the competition viable?
What happened here was that when the logistics of trying to get the Six Nations to play three different countries from the Southern Hemisphere were explored, the travel burden was crazy.
Wallace Sititi in action for the All Blacks against Ireland last year. Photo / Photosport
The tyranny of geography generated valid player welfare concerns that at least one northern nation, if not two, would be lumbered with a schedule of having to play in Argentina, South Africa and Japan in consecutive weeks.
Geographically, Argentina is the outlier, but they haven’t been asked to shift some home games to neutral territory to make the travel easier for the Six Nations (Japan will play Ireland at a to-be-determined neutral venue somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere).
What we have is the two perceived weakest nations being handed an inequitable draw, sold to them on the basis they should be grateful to be part of the competition.
And to compound matters, the Six Nations (Scotland, Wales and England this year and Ireland, France and Italy next time) enjoy an unfair advantage of an effective – and in Scotland’s case an actual – additional home game.
It may not seem much, but playing Fiji in the heat and humidity of Suva or Nadi is an entirely different proposition, and the Celts in particular may not go so well with the sun beating down on them.
The argument will no doubt come forward that compromising on playing venues was the only option to make the competition viable. But given the now inherent lack of integrity with which the Nations Championship has been straddled, there is a stronger argument that says organisers simply needed to bin it and come up with an entirely different format. Perhaps, better still, they could have just left things as they were, so no one need endure the awfulness of marketing types telling us to get excited on finals day that Japan’s victory over Wales in the sixth-versus-sixth match has given the Southern Hemisphere a 1-0 lead.
Gregor Paul is one of New Zealand’s most respected rugby writers and columnists. He has won multiple awards for journalism and written several books about sport.