Six Nations 2026
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@mohikamo said in Six Nations 2026:
@Bovidae said in Six Nations 2026:
Not the 6N, but in the second tier competition Germany beat Romania 30-24.
And this is the problem with the 6N.
Full houses, lots of money . . . but it is a closed shop.
While that's good for the teams in the show, the fact that the rest of the Euro teams are shutout of the party is not good for rugby as a whole.
Usual blinkered rugby thinking.While Eng/Fra will always be ok, the others, Wales/Sco/Italy, and even Ire, could easily be relegated at some point.
Especially Wales.Other Euro nations are forever improving.
If the likes of Spain or Germany ever got into the comp, with the resources they could muster . . . and the market potential . . . wow!
But nah, F'em, it's our party.This one has been done to death
Go and have a look at the past winners of the 6N and see the last time England won it
And when you find that, go back and find when they last won the Grand Slam
And don’t bother looking for Scotland or Italy
Improve your own tournament and stop trying to fix something which isn’t broken
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@game_film said in Six Nations 2026:
Put Georgia in the 6N and come back to me in a decade. They would flat out belong.
Should prolly add Namibia/Fiji to the RC then.
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@game_film said in Six Nations 2026:
Put Georgia in the 6N and come back to me in a decade. They would flat out belong.
I don't think that you're wrong in that assertion although it would take time. Back along when France joined the then Home Nations competition it took them 12 years to become competitive. Italy has been going for 25 years plus and is only just getting competitive, although they have had the odd win during that time. In fact they have beaten everyone but England at one time or another. The issue though is that 6 nations is just about enough. One team more is one team too many. Given that it does seem to take quite some time for the new guys to be consistently competitive the argument for promotion and relegation is a difficult circle to square. If Georgia got promoted at the expense of say Italy or Wales they would almost certainly be relegated next year. How does that really benefit them?
I do agree that they need and should be rewarded with games that offer them the opportunity to grow and maybe games against the A teams of the 6N sides would be the first step.
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Surely this is what the Nations Championship is for
Top 12 in the world
Georgia had opportunities to get into the Top 12 and didn't make it
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@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
Improve your own tournament and stop trying to fix something which isn’t broken
you wish it was done to death
it aint goin away, and as the years roll by, it is just guna get louder and louder and louder
at some point it is going to become an anchronism (like the soccer one did, decades ago)The 6N aint broken, but there is a very big fracture between it, and the rest of euro rugby
Current rankings
3 england
4 france
5 ireland
9 italy
10 scotland
11 wales
13 georgia
15 spain
19 portugal
21 belgium
22 romaniait's gettin a bit "squeezy" between 9 and 22
13 to 22 would probably already be "squeezed up" if they were accruing the same financial benefits that 9, 10 and 11 are
you'd think the 6N would be falling over themselves to get a country the size of Spain to the party.As for the SH, well the RC is barely even a comp, some years they dont even bother with it.
Oh, like this year.
Which is ok by me.
Just play a series; which is guna happen this year; and it's guna be mega! -
@mohikamo said in Six Nations 2026:
@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
Improve your own tournament and stop trying to fix something which isn’t broken
you wish it was done to death
it aint goin away, and as the years roll by, it is just guna get louder and louder and louder
at some point it is going to become an anchronism (like the soccer one did, decades ago)The 6N aint broken, but there is a very big fracture between it, and the rest of euro rugby
Current rankings
3 england
4 france
5 ireland
9 italy
10 scotland
11 wales
13 georgia
15 spain
19 portugal
21 belgium
22 romaniait's gettin a bit "squeezy" between 9 and 22
13 to 22 would probably already be "squeezed up" if they were accruing the same financial benefits that 9, 10 and 11 are
you'd think the 6N would be falling over themselves to get a country the size of Spain to the party.As for the SH, well the RC is barely even a comp, some years they dont even bother with it.
Oh, like this year.
Which is ok by me.
Just play a series; which is guna happen this year; and it's guna be mega!That's hilarious, an 'anachronism'
The 6N is much more than one rugby team versus another. It's centuries of nation v nation.
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Since (and including) the last RWC Georgia has played
Australia - Lost twice
Fiji - Lost twice
Wales - Lost
Japan - Won once, Lost once
All Blacks XV - Lost
Italy - Lost
Ireland - Lost
Cheethas - Lost
South Africa - LostThey, like Wales, are where they deserve to be
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@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
The 6N is much more than one rugby team versus another. It's centuries of nation v nation.
I actually attended an international rugby event on the weekend.
All the top countries in the world were there except . . .
No England
No Scotland
No Ireland
No Wales
Why? . . . because they are not even countries . . . they are anachronismsTell you who was there . . . Spain was there, and they were very very good.
They finished ahead of France, and another team . . . called . . . Great Britain!
Great Britain . . . a real country!
Who went on to finish last in both the M and the W. -
@mohikamo said in Six Nations 2026:
@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
The 6N is much more than one rugby team versus another. It's centuries of nation v nation.
I actually attended an international rugby event on the weekend.
All the top countries in the world were there except . . .
No England
No Scotland
No Ireland
No Wales
Why? . . . because they are not even countries . . . they are anachronismsTell you who was there . . . Spain was there, and they were very very good.
They finished ahead of France, and another team . . . called . . . Great Britain!
Great Britain . . . a real country!
Who went on to finish last in both the M and the W.
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@mohikamo said in Six Nations 2026:
@Bovidae said in Six Nations 2026:
Not the 6N, but in the second tier competition Germany beat Romania 30-24.
And this is the problem with the RC.
Some Full houses, lots of money . . . but it is a closed shop.
While that's good for the teams in the show, the fact that the rest of the African and Pasiifa teams are shutout of the party is not good for rugby as a whole.
Usual blinkered rugby thinking.While SA/NZ will always be ok, the others, Aus/Argentina, could easily be relegated at some point.
Especially Aus.Other SH nations are forever improving.
If the likes of Fiji, Samoa, Japan, Tonga ever got into the comp, with the resources they could muster . . . and the market potential . . . wow!
But nah, F'em, it's our party.There you go fixed it for you.
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@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
@mohikamo said in Six Nations 2026:
@MiketheSnow said in Six Nations 2026:
The 6N is much more than one rugby team versus another. It's centuries of nation v nation.
I actually attended an international rugby event on the weekend.
All the top countries in the world were there except . . .
No England
No Scotland
No Ireland
No Wales
Why? . . . because they are not even countries . . . they are anachronismsTell you who was there . . . Spain was there, and they were very very good.
They finished ahead of France, and another team . . . called . . . Great Britain!
Great Britain . . . a real country!
Who went on to finish last in both the M and the W.Needs to be jumping a shark.
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Unless Scotland and Wales get their act together and sort themselves out, Georgia and Spain will overhaul them in the world rankings in the next five years.
It will become faintly ridiculous if the 6 Nations isn't a competition between the best Rugby teams in Europe. The gravy train for Scotland and Wales won't necessarily last forever.
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Saved for posterity
You can do better mate
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@sparky said in Six Nations 2026:
Unless Scotland and Wales get their act together and sort themselves out, Georgia and Spain will overhaul them in the world rankings in the next five years.
It will become faintly ridiculous if the 6 Nations isn't a competition between the best Rugby teams in Europe. The gravy train for Scotland and Wales won't necessarily last forever.
I think there are arguments for both viewpoints re the 6N inclusivity or lack thereof.. Firstly in that whilst Wales now and Scotland previously are/have been poor, they are and were, still above all the "lesser" European nations in the rankings. Secondly as we have seen with Scotland and no doubt will with Wales, these things are cyclical. I would fully expect Wales to improve at a rate greater than say Georgia over the next couple of years and would also expect their ceiling to be much higher.. There is also the popularity, tradition and financial aspect of the tournament. The 6N is so financially successful in the main due to the popularity and tradition. If you took any of the current teams out in favour of say Georgia or Spain, the tournament would likely lose a significant home gate and very likely a significant loss on the TV rights. I can't see any of the 6N putting up with that scenario without even considering a less selfish view of wishing the retain the status quo with their traditional foes. And here, you mention Wales and Scotland and the gravy train, but they are a full part of providing that gravy train. People pay a lot of money to go to Twickenham to see England v Wales and Scotland, They don't pay the same amount to see England play Argentina or Fiji, let alone Spain and the same is true of Dublin, Paris and Rome as well.
Against all that though is the need to grow the game world-wide and to bring other nations up to competitiveness. Not only is this a noble ambition, it is also beneficial for all rugby playing nations to have even greater numbers of competitive nations. Imagine having a World Cup where you had 7 or 8 possible finalists instead of the 2-4 that we have had since inception of the WRC.
However in building this stronger and larger base it has to be mangled in a way that doesn't damage the current game, which is already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. We also have to accept that rugby cannot follow the model of football in the number of games we ask the papers to play, there just aren't the number of players, nor the money to sustain the required fixture list if much more nations are included on a regular basis.
Something must and should be done to improve the competitiveness of the lower level nations but there is only so much to give from the current top tier sides and in truth the players are already giving too much.
I'm no expert on the SH situation but from an outside view we can see that there are some considerably more competitive teams in Fiji and Japan and sometimes Samoa, being a long way above say Georgia. Barring Japan though, the SH has probaly even worse financial issues in including these sides as well as the infrrastructure problems and the corruption of the governing bodies.
So I guess what I'm saying is that yes progress needs to be speeded up and there must be a genuine pathway at sometime for lesser nations to improve and compete, but it can't be done on a knee-jerk basis. The current International game is the goos that lays the golden egg - you kill that and you kill the game.
Oh and I know that Japan is not a SH team but, well, you know.
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@sparky said in Six Nations 2026:
Unless Scotland and Wales get their act together and sort themselves out, Georgia and Spain will overhaul them in the world rankings in the next five years.
It will become faintly ridiculous if the 6 Nations isn't a competition between the best Rugby teams in Europe. The gravy train for Scotland and Wales won't necessarily last forever.
Jeepers, one win against Scotland and Italy escape your wrath.....
They've basically stunk out the Six Nations since 2000 when they joined.
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@sparky said in Six Nations 2026:
@MN5 Who are higher in the world rankings at the moment: Scotland or Italy?
And dare I mention the word trajectory.
And yes, I can see Italy winning against the All Blacks in Wellington in July if the ABs take that game for granted.
Pffft. I can't see Italy sneaking up to 5th like Scotland did recently.
The victory over Scotland could well be their only one. Big game against Wales coming up, the other three teams should put them to the sword.
But.....Italy are a team heading in the right direction.
I see they got to 8th in the rankings in 2007 and 2024 ( that surprised me ! )
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@Catogrande Italy sell out the Stadio Olympico in Rome. Argentina get crowds of over 40,000 for home games in a soccer man country. So a successful Spanish Rugby team, ranked in the top 10, could sell out the Nou Camp or the Bernabéu.
But Georgia will have the drawback for a long time of being less financially attractive than Scotland or Wales.
I'd keep it as the Six Nations for now. But discussions about a playoff between the Six Nations wooden spoon and the winner of the next tier European competition shouldn't be off the table IMHO.
