RUGBY: Robert Armstrong
TWICKENHAM is putting the finishing touches to a new gilt-edged international fixture list for 1997 in response to England’s likely exclusion by the other home unions from the Five Nations Championship.
Plans by Wales, Scotland and Ireland to set up an alternative championship along with France were discussed at a meeting in London last night. But they will be heavily overshadowed by an annual world Test series that brings England, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and France into regular competition.
The sport’s major nations have shied away from formally introducing an annual world championship which would have undermined the status of the World Cup held every four years. However, each nation, with rare exceptions, will play a minimum of two Tests annually against all the others on a home-and-away basis.
The television rights to each Test outside the Southern Hemisphere’s Tri-Nations series will be sold by the host union.
Despite the Rugby Football Union’s exclusion from the Five Nations TV committee meeting held near Heathrow, Twickenham has drawn a measure of comfort from Scotland’s inclusion of the traditional Calcutta Cup match in their official fixture list for the new season.
England believe they have a legal right under the current television contract with the BBC — which they are willing to test in the courts — to participate in next year’s Five Nations Championship but English concern about being consigned to an international no man’s land has diminished sharply this month.
South Africa, the World Cup holders, who finished third in last this year’s Tri- Nations tournament, are the latest country to agree to play England on an annual basis irrespective of their participation in other competitions. In addition Namibia, Fiji and Western Samoa are virtually certain to figure in warm-up matches against England whenever they embark on a relatively short trip to the Southern Hemisphere for a major Test. Italy are also expected to play England once a year.
England remain optimistic that a compromise over their 87,5-million TV deal with BSkyB can be worked out with the other home unions but they also take the view that the long-term development of English rugby depends mainly on frequent meetings with the Southern Hemisphere nations.