OK, let’s just pick the ball up and run with it for a little while. A reimagined global Test landscape pitching the northern hemisphere against the south commencing next July. Twelve men’s national sides playing six games each with a final playoff weekend. Concluding with one champion team hoisting a shiny trophy aloft in front of, hopefully, a worldwide television audience of millions.
On paper – and years of scribbling on the backs of envelopes have gone into this – there is some logic to it. Instead of seemingly random Tests scattered like distant dots on someone else’s map there is at least a discernible framework. Every game will, in theory, resonate. And, by virtue of pooling everybody’s TV rights, there are hopes of a collective commercial and promotional upside that can benefit the whole sport.
