Major unions must work together to ensure Test rugby has a future

The moment of truth is approaching – not so much on the field in various looming finals but off it. For better or worse the next two or three weeks could shape rugby union for the next decade and beyond, not just domestically but across the world. Not since the sport turned professional have so many executives leaned back in their office chairs, gazed up at the ceiling and silently prayed for deliverance.

And the really interesting part? No one is entirely certain yet how things will pan out. World Rugby, the sport’s governing body, will gather for its council meeting in Dublin on Wednesday, for example, still unsure whether its proposed Nations Championship is a runner. Those who want it to happen are encouraged that all the key stakeholders have at least agreed to re-examine the small print of a potential deal they have been advised could generate a collective £5bn over the next 12 years. No firm announcement is expected this week but some kind of resolution is anticipated early next month.

Related: Chris Boyd eyes chance to break the Saracens-Exeter stranglehold

It is the same with the Rugby Football Union. Last week’s meeting with club representatives, who are seeking an end to automatic promotion and relegation from the Premiership, also produced no definitive smoke from the Twickenham chimneys. Next month, though, there is due to be a formal vote on whether to recommend a 13-team Premiership in return for player welfare concessions and, crucially, the Premiership clubs agreeing to contribute more cash to help the struggling Championship on to a firmer footing.

The harsh fact, in both cases, is that rugby can ill afford any further wrong turns. If the Nations League is rejected by the Six Nations in favour of pursuing an alternative lucrative deal elsewhere, the knock-on effects could be seismic. Even before the Israel Folau saga veered sharply towards the law courts Rugby Australia’s financial situation could hardly be described as robust. The news that London Irish have signed the Sharks lock Ruan Botha might not normally be major headline material but it further underlines how the steady trickle of South African players heading north to play in Europe is in danger of becoming a flood.

With Sale’s dressing-room set to contain a whole host of South Africans next season and the incumbent Springbok fly-half Handre Pollard set to join Montpellier, the lure of being paid in rand is clearly not gripping the local player base. Gloucester will be gunning for a first Premiership final since 2007 with their own hand-picked posse of South Africans; they are up against a Saracens side who have been down the same route in the past. So what happens after the World Cup when the majority of the Boks’ first-choice side are playing in Europe? Where does that leave South African player development in the longer term?

And what, ultimately, might that do for the future allure of Test rugby? Even England, insulated for so long by the RFU’s teetering stacks of Twickenham-generated cash, are starting to feel the chill winds of austerity. In addition to cost-saving cuts to the community game, the RFU is now slashing at another of its other major arteries, namely the development of the next generation of international players.

Dean Ryan, whose job it was to oversee the programme, has resigned in protest and next year’s Wellington festival, the annual national get-together for the country’s most promising 350-odd U16 players, is set to be mothballed. The RFU insists this is intended to be only a temporary suspension (a consequence of the 2019-20 accounts taking a serious hit from the lack of internationals in a World Cup year) but try telling that to every hopeful teenager and parent who has previously regarded it as the crucial springboard to future pathway progression.

Maybe it is a blessing in disguise, the canary in the coalmine that serves as a warning to all the major unions of the likelihood of impending doom unless they all take urgent collective action. For too long, particularly in the northern hemisphere, a spirit of complacent self-interest was allowed to prevail. As long as we’re all right, Jack, never mind anybody else. It works in times of plenty, less so when the going rate for broadcast rights levels out, budget forecasts begin to look wildly optimistic and some of the world’s major nations are living in genuine fear of their domestic foundations collapsing beneath them.

At least the players’ voices are now being increasingly heard; if there is to be a 13-team Premiership in England, potentially with a future annual play-off with the Championship winners, it will be only if the low-profile Premiership Cup competition is scrapped. The hope, too, is that the parachute payment money which would be saved could be redirected into the Championship pot; what price England producing decent youngsters from outside its academy hothouses if the second tier of clubs wither on the vine?

It makes quite a wish list: a viable Championship, a proper route for ambitious clubs to navigate when their sums stack up, a smooth-running conveyor belt supplying a successful national team, a gripping international schedule that delights fans, players, smaller unions and TV moguls alike in both hemispheres yet still gives the club game, great and small, space to breath. Will the stars align? If they do, it could be rugby’s belated big bang moment.

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Lam gets my vote

The awards season is in full spate, with Premiership Rugby due to announce its clutch of winners on Wednesday. The prize for director of rugby of the season has been particularly hard fought: how do you possibly decide between Mark McCall, Rob Baxter, Johan Ackermann, Pat Lam and Chris Boyd, all of whom have done outstanding work for their respective clubs? Saracens are already European champions with plenty of power to add but my vote, ultimately, was cast for the coach whose side overachieved by the widest margin relative to pre-season expectations. Bristol finished five points off the play-offs and played some spectacular rugby while Lam has proved an outstanding ambassador for both his adopted city and his sport. In any other year he would be a nailed-on winner.

One to watch: Glasgow v Leinster

The Guinness Pro14 final is being staged at Celtic Park, offering Glasgow the chance to hoist the trophy on Scottish soil. For Leinster there is clearly a desire to atone for their Champions Cup defeat by Saracens and give Irish rugby something to smile about in a calendar year that has not, so far, gone according to plan. For Scottish rugby, in contrast, a Warriors win would be a perfect appetiser for the World Cup pool game between Scotland and Ireland in Japan in September.