World Rugby chairman: Six Nations should open for Georgia, Romania

5 APR 2016 - 18:56:00

Georgia and Romania should be given a chance to play in a revamped Six Nations competition, says chairman of World Rugby - the international governing body for the sport.

Talking to French media, outgoing World Rugby chairman Bernard Lapasset said he wanted promotion and relegation to be introduced in the tournament, which would give the Lelos and the Oaks an opportunity to play with tier one nations.

From Solihull to sold-out stadiums and success in Sweden’s Winter City
Graham Potter is the English manager who did the impossible – took Ostersund from the fourth tier to the top flight of Swedish football in just five years

Comfortable in the cold, the Ostersund manager, Graham Potter, has taken his side from the fourth tier of Swedish football to the top in just five years. Photograph: Petter Arvidson/Bildbyran

Louise Taylor
Saturday 2 April 2016 20.59 BST Last modified on Sunday 3 April 2016 00.35 BST

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The nice young English couple were evidently not tourists so what on earth had brought them to Sweden’s Vinterstaden – the Winter City? Were they properly equipped for life in the frozen north? Could they comprehend the challenge confronting them?

Solicitous locals had plenty of questions and were not exactly reassured by the answers. “When we arrived people were really friendly,” recalls Graham Potter. “I’d be out with my wife and they’d ask why we were here. When I told them, they’d immediately look concerned or puzzled and tell us it was ‘useless’, ‘impossible’, or: ‘You’re crazy.’”

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The overwhelming consensus was that he had signed up for a hopeless cause but – five years and three promotions on – Potter has led Ostersund all the way from the fourth tier of Swedish football to a debut season in the top flight, the Allsvenskan. “Fortunately I was sufficiently naive and optimistic not to believe what I was hearing,” says the former journeyman full-back. “I always felt something special could happen.”


On Monday evening such faith will be fully vindicated as the team from a small, hitherto nordic-sports fixated town – population 45,000, a six-hour drive north of Stockholm – visit Hammarby in their opening fixture of Sweden’s new domestic season.

“At first we had crowds of about 500,” says Potter, whose team were attracting 6,500 sellouts by the end of last season and have now moved into a new 10,000-capacity stadium. “There was no football culture here before, it’s the Winter City and has always produced skiers but now young boys and girls are joining football schools and you see kids running around in our tops. I’ve got a six-year-old son and it’s great to see his friends wearing them.”

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Potter also has nine-month-old twin boys who one day will doubtless hear all about the significance of Monday’s kick-off. A historic moment for Ostersund, it will also be a particularly proud one for the 40-year-old from Solihull, whose playing career took in principally Birmingham, Stoke, West Brom, York and Macclesfield, with eight games in the Premier League for Southampton.


Increasingly bored by much of the formulaic coaching and “cultural norms” which defined his life as a professional, Potter completed an Open University degree in social sciences while still playing. It led to football development posts, first at Hull University – from where he secured a secondment as technical director of the Ghana women’s team at the 2007 World Cup in China – and then Leeds Metropolitan University. In Leeds he completed an MA in leadership and emotional intelligence – a qualification that has served him well in a most unusual managerial posting.

“Without those experiences in higher education I wouldn’t have been able to do this job,” says Potter. “It taught me a more holistic approach and prepared me for the experience of working abroad, where your cultural beliefs are challenged and, sometimes, turned on their head.”


Then there’s the weather. Pre-season training in Ostersund starts in January and Potter swiftly learnt that while the influence of the Gulf Stream may mitigate the harshness of such a high latitude climate, the arctic Kallvastan winds whipping off the giant lake, Storsjon, remain exceptionally cutting. “When it gets down to minus 25C it’s: ‘Wow.’ You do notice it,” he says. “But a lot of the time it’s a different, nicer, drier cold than in England.”

Even so, the conditions represent a considerable challenge for Potter’s eclectic squad that has variously featured players from Ghana, Nigeria, Comoros, South Korea, Mexico, the United States, Bosnia, Spain and England. “I had two boys arriving from Ghana,” he says. “When they boarded the plane in Accra it was thirtysomething degrees C, when they arrived here it was minus 30C.”

The latest intake includes Jamal Blackman, a talented young goalkeeper who arrives on loan from Chelsea, and joins his compatriot Jamie Hopcutt, a former York trainee whose creativity and goals have helped propel Ostersund up the divisions.

There had been a plan that the club would house several young north African footballers, with the Libyan government at one point pledging to inject £47m into an outpost they intended to turn into a satellite academy. Potter was not exactly surprised when, following Libya’s descent into anarchy, the cash from Tripoli never materialised. “What you’ve never had, you never miss,” he says.

Without it, he has created a fascinating cultural scene which not only ensured Ostersund became very much part of the local community but helped players avoid succumbing to boredom and isolation.

So far Potter’s squad have collaborated in writing a book, staging an art exhibition, acting in plays and dancing – in, possibly, his most ambitious project to date, they staged a version of Swan Lake.


“I’m not sure how some of our ideas would go down in England,” he says. “But we try to develop individuals as open-minded humans rather than just footballers. Educating players and being part of the community are very important. I want to take people out of their comfort zones and teach them to rely on their team-mates.”

With Sweden’s immigration policy and the refugee crisis hot topics in Ostersund – where a recent spate of attacks on the town’s women has been blamed by some on foreigners – the club helps build bridges by involving refugees in community activities.

Out on the pitch, Potter’s determination to think laterally means his team switch seamlessly between 3-5-2 – a rare formation in a country where 4-4-2 still reigns – and playing with a back four. So far it has proved a winning formula but this rare successful English manager abroad acknowledges the season ahead represents a huge advance.

“Our flexibility and adaptability with the back three has probably been the key to our success,” he says. “We’ve got to keep translating positive, attacking football into results. It’s going to be difficult but this is an historic period for the club – it’s nice to be part of it.”

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do you read? or you just make shit up

The 2018–19 UEFA Nations League will be the inaugural season of the UEFA Nations League, a planned international association football competition involving the men's national teams of the 54 member associations of UEFA.[1] The competition, which will be held from September to November 2018 (pool stage) and June 2019 (final four competition), will also serve as part of the qualification process for UEFA Euro 2020, awarding berths in the play-offs which will decide four of the twenty-four final tournament slots.

Edited by adrtho: 26/3/2016 06:01:08 PM

Wont happen too much resistance.

Doesn't that new UEFA Nations League thingo coming in a few years time involve promo relegation? Pretty much going to turn it into tiers too. By the way I hate the idea :lol:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018%E2%80%9319_UEFA_Nations_League

Im not arguing promotion relegation. You post a video about national rugby union teams having tiers. Thats a bit weird at national level tbh. I guess we have fifa rankings though.

This gives me great hope and it gives me a sneaking suspicion that the FFA are looking into this.

An Eight Nations Championship? It will be with us sooner or later

Stuart Hogg scores against France in this year's Six Nations match. Picture: Getty

Stuart Bathgate, Senior Sports Writer / Tuesday 22 March 2016 / Sport
Published Tuesday 22 March 2016 / Sport
3 comments





IN the beginning, of course, there were only two teams who played international rugby. Once Wales and Ireland joined Scotland and England, the Home Nations Championship was begun in 1883. France made it Five Nations in 1910, and now we are six.

If history teaches us anything, about rugby or almost any topic under the sun, it is that nothing remains the same for too long. It is therefore reasonable to presume that the current Six Nations set-up, in place since Italy joined in 2000, will eventually be replaced.


But what will come next? Over the past few seasons, there have been growing calls for the relegation of the team that finishes bottom. Last season, as Scotland slumped to a whitewash, there were intemperate demands for them to be kicked out; this season, the heat has been transferred to Italy.

At the same time, there has been an increasingly widespread presumption that the Championship is already in effect a two-tier affair. Remember the verdict from that old charmer Sir Clive Woodward after England had won their first two games this season, at Murrayfield and then against the Italians? “So far England have dealt very well with the Second Division of the Six Nations,” he wrote. “But it’s First Division all the way from this point onwards.”

As it happened, England dealt just as well with the so-called First Division teams on their way to a Grand Slam, but Woodward’s glib analysis was undone to an extent by Scotland’s victory over France - a result which helped them finish above the French in the final table. Still, if this season’s modest improvement means a lessening of the pressure on Scotland, it probably means more for Italy, at least as long as they continue to lag some way behind the rest.

At the same time, Georgia have enhanced their reputation, not only as the best team in Europe outwith the Six Nations, but also as a country where rugby has grown massively in popularity. That growth was demonstrated yet again last week, when 52,000 watched the Georgians’ win over Romania in Tbilisi - a victory that clinched their sixth successive European Nations Cup.

So it’s simple, right? Let’s throw Italy out and bring Georgia in?

There would certainly be a strong argument for such a move if the sole criterion were merit, and if the presumption were that we would have to carry on with only six teams in the championship. But matters are more complicated than that, and other criteria cannot be ignored.

For a start, the Six Nations is about a lot more than the actual rugby: it is also a significant part of the tourist industry. Some of us may travel to away games primarily to witness the 80 minutes of action, but others are just as keen on going for the drinking in Dublin, or a visit to the Vatican, or any of the other joys of a city-break weekend. We should recognise that fact - not in order to placate anyone whose job it is to attract tourists to their country, but because it shows that many rugby supporters do not place quite so much importance on results as do those who call for promotion and relegation.

Looking at the issue in strictly rugby terms, what would be the point of expelling Italy? Yes, if Georgia came in instead, the standard of the Championship might be higher for a season or two, but are there really so many rugby-playing countries in the world that we can afford to jettison one of them?

Once Italy left the Six Nations, there would be no way back, at least not for a long time. Their form would suffer without that higher standard of competition for many of their players to experience, and that would benefit no-one.

So what’s the answer? Rather than presume we can only have a one-in-one-out alteration, let’s invite Georgia on board and make it Seven Nations. And in time, if and when Romania get back up to the level of play they reached in the 1980s, let’s make it Eight.

The biggest problem in such an expansion of the international game would be the risk of overloading the players. With a league season of 22 games or more, Autumn Tests, Six Nations and summer tours, Test players are already just about at the limit of how much rugby they can play.

There are several possible solutions. We could cut the number of teams in the top divisions of the leagues - something that many clubs would resist. We could increase the number of players on international duty over the course of a season, with some star names being rested for certain games - something that would not go down well with coaches, supporters, sponsors or indeed the players themselves.

Or we could, perhaps after a bedding-in period of two or three years, divide the Eight Nations into two divisions, with one up one down between the two. All sorts of vested interests would resist that one, too, but in the end it may well come to be seen as the obvious next step for the tournament.

Biggest disappointment: Italy's continued decline – The Azzurri's performances during the 2016 Six Nations have only lent further weight to the growing argument for the introduction of a promotion/relegation system that would allow emerging European teams like Georgia and Romania more opportunity to play at the highest level. Although they ran France close in their curtain-raiser, Italy went on to ship five tries against England in Rome and nine against Ireland. A woeful showing finished with a thumping 67-14 defeat at the hands of Wales. Time for a change?

promotion and relegation is a pipedream. a second tier would be possible if weren't wasting money on the womens game, which is quite tedious to watch, and lacks tempo and atmosphere

I dont see it like that personally. The 6 nations is a league. The World Cup is the a tournament.

The World Cup is open for qualification, unlike the 6 nations. The 6 countries have made a decision to exclude countries. Much like the Rugby Championship excludes island nations.

It is exactly the same that happens in the A-League.

Edited by scott21: 24/3/2016 01:42:24 AM

Honestly its 2 different sports, national teams and they play over a complete continent.

I think it poses the same problems that the A-League has.

You perhaps want some new team/s but are scared of losing the established team. For the rugby it would be difficult. You would have to probably have to have a second tier then eventually increase it to 7 teams. Meaning the 7th team would probably be Georgia, then Spain/Romania on rotation.

This is also the FFAs argument. Pro rel could be brought in the same time as expansion. So you increase the comp to 12, meaning the current 10 teams never have to be relegated -........if they are good enough.

Everything comes from the establishment of a second division.

So the A-League in a way is more like 6 nations than the premier league. They do nothing to help the smaller teams.

Im not arguing promotion relegation. You post a video about national rugby union teams having tiers. Thats a bit weird at national level tbh. I guess we have fifa rankings though.

This was our promotion after 5 years.

We had to draw to go up. We won 5-0...... actually the ref called the game off with 3 minutes of extra time to be played (in the 92nd of 95).

[youtube]qWsoeJLS0Gg[/youtube]

Thats pretty telling. I don't think international p/r is a good idea but I'm willing to keep an open mind.

[youtube]ivv4QUGlOrw[/youtube]



Cross over arguments. But the issues about a closed league and not developing others remains.




Edited by scott21: 23/3/2016 12:51:17 AM

Yay. Another multi that is not funny. Yippee.

promotion and relegation is a pipedream. a second tier would be possible if weren't wasting money on the womens game, which is quite tedious to watch, and lacks tempo and atmosphere

But every club wants in and says they can. Hence the massive push. So you're wrong again.

not about the same subject , i would have change my opinion, understood there was some part of the info i was missing , that keep me being wrong

And for 8 years you've been talking shit and have been wrong as well.

Que?

-PB

Should the National NPL division (2nd tier) be a straight league season first past the post or because their is no promotion to the A-League to begin would you have final series.

Me personal think we should just make it straight league so people get used to the idea of a first past the post league system so that when promotion does become possible supporters of teams in this league its already ingrained in them what is required.