All Blacks coach Scott Robertson said the new competition was exciting for players and fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a unique season when you consider all the elements, including the tours we have ahead of us and the chance to host France, Italy, Ireland and Australia in the same year,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach test we play against our Northern Hemisphere rivals will take on extra significance, with Nations Championship competition points on the line as teams vie for a place in the inaugural Northern Hemisphere v Southern Hemisphere final.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Nations Championship is a new international competition that transforms the existing July and November windows into a competitive cross-hemisphere format every two years, outside of World Cup and Lions tour years.<\/p>\n
The Six Nations teams will form a European group representing the Northern Hemisphere, and take on the Sanzaar nations, Japan and Fiji, who form a group nominally representing the Southern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
The finals weekend will see the No 1 teams in the Northern and Southern Hemisphere groups face each other to determine the inaugural Nations Championship winner. <\/p>\n
Nations Championship<\/p>\n
Southern Series<\/p>\n
Saturday, July 4: All Blacks v France.<\/p>\n
Saturday, July 11: All Blacks v Italy.<\/p>\n
Saturday, July 18: All Blacks v Ireland.<\/p>\n
Northern Series<\/p>\n
Sunday, November 8: All Blacks v Scotland.<\/p>\n
Sunday, November 15: All Blacks v Wales.<\/p>\n
Sunday, November 22: All Blacks v England.<\/p>\n
November 28-30: Finals Weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All Blacks coach Scott Robertson said the new competition was exciting for players and fans. \u201cIt\u2019s a unique…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2246,5263,95,8136,18239,40671,2837,1221,6489,12022,187,8454,8019,1224,5832,14571,17154,111,139,69,10538,12860,6102,213,764,1361,61,1533,379],"class_list":["post-140023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2246","tag-all","tag-and","tag-blacks","tag-championship","tag-draw","tag-during","tag-france","tag-games","tag-host","tag-hosting","tag-including","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-july","tag-kick","tag-nations","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-play","tag-revealed","tag-side","tag-sports","tag-tests","tag-that","tag-to","tag-will","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}