Raising funds for World Club Cup will not be easy

GIVEN the problems rugby is facing across the globe, with finances just one of them, a new tournament in an already congested calendar being ripped off the prescription pad appears to be more placebo than cure.

- 

The Rugby World Club Cup, although it will contain far more franchises than clubs, will start in 2028 and be held every four years. It will be made up of eight teams from the Investec Champions Cup and seven from Super Rugby Pacific and Japan, nominally taking in all the tier one nations except Argentina.

It will launch in June 2028 when the Champions Cup will have reached the quarter-final stage when they will be joined by sides from Super Rugby Pacific, in which six teams enter the knock-out stage, and Japan. It will not mean any extra fixtures for any of the sides involved, but it will extend the club season.

No details have yet been announced, but it would be difficult to play the rounds in consecutive weeks: a European side could find itself in New Zealand one round and at home in the next one, unless the plan is to play it in alternating hemispheres or a neutral country. The last 16 round would need to be played a number of weeks before for logistical reasons such as travel plans.

It also means that by the summer of 2028 some players in Europe will have gone 12 months without a meaningful break as camps for the 2027 Rugby World Cup will start in June that year. Factor in summer Tests in 2028, which is set to be the second instalment of the World Rugby Nations Championship, and the season will stretch into August with domestic leagues starting the following month.

Will the Top 14, which this year is being staged on June 28 with the new season starting 10 weeks later making its span longer than the Premier League in English football, go on for even longer? And where will it leave the French national side who have come to go on summer tours without players from the clubs involved in the closing knock-out stages of the league with the Nations Cup giving the summer and autumn tours a competitive hue?