Secret Sale

It emerged In march that World rugby trIed to secretly sell InternatIonal football to the hIghest bIdder. thankfully they Were caught In the act.

- Gregor Paul

It turns out that World Rugby sneakily tried to sell the international game earlier this year.

Quite how they thought they would get away with it is a mystery and thankfully they were caught red-handed and with their fingers in the till, just about every executive involved began back-tracking as fast as they could to distance themselves from their true intentions.

But no one should doubt that there was a clear and agreed plan to create a 12-team World League that would include the current Six Nations and Rugby Championship teams, with USA and Japan to join the latter.

These 12 teams were going to be guaranteed a place in the World League for 12 years as there was not going to be any promotion or relegation.

The format proposed was that all 12 teams would play each other in a calendar year.

The Northern teams would travel South to play three tests in July – the June window is moving to July in 2020 – and the South would travel North to play the other three teams in November.

Six Nations and Rugby Championship games would count towards the league and there would be semi-finals and final in late November and early December.

This exact proposal was taken to potential financial backers and won immediate support with a provisional deal worth an additional $14 million a year per country.

However much the various executives have subsequently insisted this deal was a long way from being agreed, the truth is that they all hoped to begin formalising it in March.

The reason for their urgency was that both the Six Nations and Sanzaar nations are poised to begin negotiations to extend their respective broadcast deals.

For World League to extract maximum value, the whole thing needs to be sold as one package and hence the accelerated plan to sign a deal that nearly everyone thinks would be a disaster.