Fans of English rugby – the real ones who follow the Premiership – could be forgiven for outrage at the suspension of the domestic game for the next few weeks. Such have been the remarkable matches coming at us from all angles in the first six rounds of the season, any resentment at November’s narrowing of focus on Twickenham, where tickets tend to be reserved for certain types, would be only natural.
As exhilarating as it may be, domestic rugby pretty much everywhere, but certainly in England, does not wash its face financially. So, over to the international game to try to keep everything afloat.
When we say Twickenham, we obviously mean the suburb of south-west London, not the stadium at its heart, because that has a new name, for the sake of revenue generation. We will not be calling this annual jamboree the Autumn Nations Series for very much longer either.
From 2026, rugby’s international windows in July and November will be given over to the Nations Championship. In two years’ time, we will be talking about the finals series of the first iteration of the tournament, featuring the 10 Tier One nations plus two others, thought to be Japan and Fiji.
That event will culminate in a final at the end of November 2026 at, if reports are to be believed, the stadium by any other name in Twickenham. There was talk of the first final being held in Qatar, which really would have maxed out on the revenue generation front, but it was felt that taking the money would be a little de trop for the first event, not to mention morally dubious given Qatar’s human rights record. So they are going to do it in 2028 instead, with the third final, in 2030, slated for the United States. Who knows where their human rights record will be by then?
But it is the rights of the players that continue to exercise anxious minds. The RFU is by far the most powerful union financially, more so after it sold the name of one of the most famous stadiums in the world, but it needs to be, with multiple caps in hand presented to it by rugby folk across the land and up and down the largest community pyramid in the world – and abuse hurled from seemingly all quarters as it fills them.
It also remains the main backer of the Premiership clubs, some former players of which are now suing it for the life-changing conditions they believe they developed in the call of duty. It has also announced the first 17 players to be put on enhanced contracts of £160,000 to play for England, with a further eight available as part of the new PGP deal with Premier Rugby.
No sooner had the contracts been announced than the players awarded them sounded the alarm over their welfare. They have a point, too. Whoever ends up financing the Nations Cup, they will want their pound of flesh.
The quadrennial World Cup, which is World Rugby’s only meaningful source of revenue, will now in effect be staged in three years out of four, massively diminishing the prestige of the main event as well as the players’ ability to rise to the multiple occasions. In those years when there is not a World Cup or Nations Championship, there will be a British & Irish Lions tour, probably the greatest menace to player welfare of them all.
So we should savour the quaint Autumn International series while we can. This year’s kicks off when the All Blacks come calling on England at You Know Where on Saturday, with Scotland hosting Fiji later the same afternoon. Thereafter, we are in full flow, with all the big dogs from either side of the world playing each other, as well as Japan, who lost 64-19 to the All Blacks on Saturday in Yokohama, and Fiji. A dress rehearsal for 2026, you might say.
Until very recently, the prospect of watching England represented as diametrically opposite an experience to watching the Premiership as it is possible to imagine. But something happened midway through the Six Nations, as if Steve Borthwick suddenly found his feet as head coach or the penny dropped with the players of how to unleash the sheer derring-do of their club game in the international arena. A swaggering home win over the champions, Ireland, was followed by an epic in Lyon on the final weekend, albeit in defeat.
Continuation of such form should mitigate any yearnings for Premiership fare next month. If the new England can open by beating New Zealand in an engaging anner, succeeding where they so narrowly failed against the All Blacks in the summer, November need not seem so bleak. Then it will be back to trying to make everything add up for an increasingly desperate sport.
