The concept is a tempting one but as those other sports can attest, the execution is another matter entirely.
The cricket version fell over through a lack of interest and sponsorship, as well as confusing player-qualification rules which effectively made it into an extended Indian Premier League. The football version has never really got going (they’re rebooting it for 2025 as a 32-team competition) with the likes of a regional competition in the European Champions League still seen as the more prestigious trophy. In our part of the world, it’s seen as a pre-Christmas oddity usually involving Auckland City but with little material sporting impact.
So, can rugby do what they have not?
An explanation...
Rugby is probably better placed to meet those headwinds than cricket and football, given franchise rugby (for want of a better term) doesn’t have one competition or continent reigning supreme. Rugby teams are still seen as local enough to be representative of their nation rather than the wills of a global superpower picking off the best talent the world has (not that rugby is necessarily immune from that).
Sixteen teams – eight from up north, six from Super Rugby Pacific and two likely from Japan – seems about right for a Club World Cup to have some sort of merit. The June window, around when the world’s top leagues have their finals, is about as close to a perfect fit in the calendar as you’d find. Rugby league’s iteration of the World Club Challenge has always struggled for the right timing with NRL sides using it as a pre-season trial.
A suggestion...
There are some unanswered questions. The northern unions have decided to forego their Champions Cup knockouts that year.
Super Rugby Pacific has not indicated what its plan will be. A truncated competition that season is a possibility or – God forbid – a late-January start. It’s also possible the six teams supplied by Super Rugby may point to a change in their playoffs system down the track – a much more palatable six-team format.
A prediction...
The risk is that rugby adds more matches to a calendar that doesn’t have room for more matches to be shoved in – and doesn’t capture the public’s attention. But keeping it as a quadrennial event rather than every year or two years will make it a more compelling affair and enhance the domestic competitions, as placings take on more meaning in the build-up to the World Cup.
Is Leinster v Blues or La Rochelle v Crusaders better in theory and in the mind of a CEO than in execution?
While Super Rugby Pacific still requires panel-beating, it’s clear there is a drive for innovation and new thinking: The Nations Championship from 2026, the return of quasi-tours between New Zealand and South Africa from the same year, the introduction of the women’s British and Irish Lions and now the Club World Cup.
Work to be done but some bigger-picture thinking is happening. That alone should be applauded.
Elliott Smith is Newstalk ZB and Gold Sport’s lead rugby commentator and reporter. He’s been a sports journalist since 2010 and has travelled to three Rugby World Cups for NZME, including commentating the Rugby World Cup final in 2023.
