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Traditional end-of-season tours could still survive but as part of a wider elite championship, according to New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Chris Moller.
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The mooted change to the international rugby season outlined by International Rugby Board chairman Syd Millar in yesterday's Herald is just one of a number of ideas discussed by rugby bosses.
Moller said the chief executives and chairmen of the national unions and the IRB were in intense discussions during 2006 to find ways to take rugby to the next level.
Yesterday's report suggested Dr Millar had cracked the code. He said a new tournament, held every two years, could feature only the leading nations of the world.
"It would enable us to fulfil the needs of unions to produce the necessary finances," Millar said. "We have to look maybe at some other formula rather than just have the Southern Hemisphere countries coming here in the autumn and playing a few matches and the Northern Hemisphere sides going to the Southern Hemisphere in May and June."
However, Moller did not necessarily agree with the notion that end-of-season tours were flawed, pointing to the success of the All Blacks' previous two Northern Hemisphere sojourns.
Moller indicated there was a chance these tours could remain but the matches could contribute to a wider competition, rather than having a single-venue tournament every two years.
"It's a question of whether or not those tests could be dealt with in a better way or make some sort of competition within a competition.
"We've got tests here in June - two against France and one against Canada. Maybe [there is] some way of making those more interesting, of making them contribute to a global competition somehow," Moller told the Herald on Sunday.
"When we're playing these matches, other Northern Hemisphere countries are playing in South Africa and Australia. They all tend to be one or two-off games. If there's some way of taking that to another level, it's got to be good for the players, the fans, the broadcasters, the commercial partners."
The NZRU has long been a vocal proponent of a global or "integrated" season, as Millar prefers to call it, but Moller said traditional rugby nations must be prepared to make compromises for the concept to work.
Moller did not rule out changes to both hemispheres' flagship tournaments - the Six Nations and Tri Nations - though Millar said these didn't need to be "tweaked".
"We [the NZRU] are not averse to change and are not going to rule anything out at this point because in the interests of enhancing the game globally, we might have to look at some of the existing things.
"Dr Millar seems to have reaffirmed his view that the Six Nations and Tri Nations are likely to remain but that's up for review when we come to the end of the current broadcasting agreement within Sanzar.
"There has got to be a willingness to look at the global game."
