Nothing from the IRB site as yet but the following has come up in the press over the weekend.

Kiwis back Test revamp

Michael Donaldon/co Rugby Heaven
Monday, January 15, 2007

New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Chris Moller is reacting conservatively to ground-breaking remarks made by International Rugby Union head Syd Millar on the future of rugby's international calendar.

Millar broke the IRB's silence on the issue of an integrated international season when he told the New Zealand Herald the IRB was considering a new tournament to be held between world cups. Millar also suggested ending or downgrading end-of-season tours.

Moller said he was not aware Millar was going to go public with the IRB's thinking, but said there were no surprises in his statements, as everything he put forward had been discussed late last year.

"I wasn't aware that he was going to make the statements he's made, but he's perfectly entitled to do so - the IRB is leading the work in this respect so it's entirely appropriate for them to make comments. Nothing of what he said in any way surprises me."

Moller said that while no one charged with rugby's future believed "anything's broken, we're always looking at ways of improving things".

However, he would not be drawn on what he saw as the solutions to rugby's main problems: reducing the number of matches while simultaneously increasing revenue, which depends on providing matches for a voracious television audience.

"In September there was a lot of discussion around these issues and a number of solutions came up - our view is that everyone needs to have an open mind about these things. It's very easy to be inflexible - we need to look at the opportunities rather than define the problem.

"What Dr Millar's commented on is one possible scenario," he said in reference to the idea of a tournament featuring the world's elite teams. "We don't have a position on that or any other options at this point of time because it's very easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and say yes or no without having worked through all the details."

Moller said there was a need to rethink the traditional tours - northern hemisphere teams going south in June and the reciprocal tours in November.

"Those tours, whether they are in-bound here in June or at the end of the year to the northern hemisphere, are essentially one-off matches - the exception was clearly the grand slam we achieved in 2005 and that certainly created some excitement.

"So I think there's an opportunity to look at a competition of some nature within that time frame, or maybe it (the November tour) gets replaced by something else as Dr Millar has suggested."

Moller said the NZRU would remain "vocal about player welfare, but that relates to the total number of games, not just the number of tests."

Sunday Star-Times


Jones cool on mini-World Cup

By Jim Tucker, Courier Mail/Fox Sports
January 15, 2007

A NEW tournament exclusively for rugby's top nations, mooted for the gap between Rugby World Cups, yesterday received a cool reception from Queensland Reds coach Eddie Jones.

Jones was responding to the weekend remarks of International Rugby Board chairman Syd Millar on possible changes to an increasingly cluttered international fixture list.

"I don't think we need another tournament to take away from the Tests we play annually. We've already got a World Cup," Jones said.

Jones agrees with Millar's aim to put more meaning back into Test rugby but not the possible method, a mini-World Cup.

Millar hinted a tournament, two years out from each Rugby World Cup, might incorporate the November tour schedules of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa into a competition format with the northern hemisphere powers.

Millar said such a tournament and reducing end-of-season tours, to the southern hemisphere in June and to Europe in November, would have several benefits.

"It would solve many things such as concern over player welfare and number of matches," he said. "It would create more relevant games and be a more effective way of increasing revenue."