What is the Nations Championship? Format, fixtures and how rugby’s new tournament works

The Autumn Nations Series is dead. Whether you think that is a positive or not, or even if you didn’t really care much for it, it has gone.

But, in its place comes a unique concept whipped up by the powers that be to make the ‘end-of-year’ internationals a little more meaningful.

So then, is this concept genius or stupid? Will the fans get behind this truly? And finally, what even is the Nations Championship?

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How does it work?

Essentially, the tournament will work as a North vs South championship.

The six best northern hemisphere teams (just the Six Nations sides) will work as one big team and will compete against the six best southern hemisphere sides: South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, Fiji and Japan.

Every northern team will play each southern team once and vice versa.

The first three games will take place in July in the southern hemisphere (aside from Fiji’s ‘home games’, which will take place in the UK).

The three remaining group games will then take place in the northern hemisphere in November.

Following? Well, this is where it becomes slightly confusing. The pool stages aren’t mixed; both hemispheres are in their own separate pools.

All the pools do is determine who plays who in the ‘finals weekend’, late November in London.

Wherever a team places in their group, they will face the team from the opposite hemisphere that finished in the same spot.

So sixth vs sixth and fifth vs fifth, etc.

What is ‘Super Sunday’ and how does the finals weekend work?

The finals weekend is where the teams finally compete for points against each other.

There are seven points on offer for teams to get for their hemisphere. The second-place to sixth-place final winners receive one point each, while the winner of the first-place final receives two.

Whichever hemisphere ends with the most points is victorious, with trophies for the winners of each final also being handed out.

So that is how it works, but let’s address the elephant in the room.

This tournament has done the thing it has promised to do: give the autumn some meaning. But that does not mean fans are still crazy happy.

First of all, will the teams even care about competing for their hemisphere? Come on, come finals weekend, do the organisers really expect the likes of Welsh and Scottish fans to be cheering on England and reverse? That surely will not happen.

Will the new format mean missing out on rugby’s biggest rivalries?

And also, yes, a big finals weekend is really cool, watching the world’s best compete together outside a World Cup is awesome, but fans will be missing some of the biggest rivalries.

We can’t see the All blacks try to get revenge on South Africa or the age-old Australia-New Zealand rivalry.

The other issue which may come about is how seriously the teams take the tournament.

The pool stages are close to meaningless in the sense that, regardless of where they finish in the group, they will still be competing for a trophy and a point at the end of it.

The fact that the second-ranked team and the sixth-ranked team’s final has the same weight seems slightly unfair and perhaps needs a rework.

And then, similar to the fans, is there really an incentive for individual teams to compete for their hemisphere?

It remains to be seen, but it is not entirely convincing that these teams are desperate to fight for their half of the globe.

Could the Nations Championship actually work?

Okay, there are plenty of question marks that will only be answered when this whole thing actually takes place, but for all those negatives, this thing is still pretty cool.

The fact that over the course of just one weekend, 12 of the biggest nations will battle it out for glory is awesome. That is the stuff of rugby fans’ dreams.

And if the teams take the groups seriously, which they should, as it is valuable training for next year’s World Cup, then we should be seeing six close games in the final.

There is some serious potential with this tournament, but it does look as though there are some gaping holes in the plan.

Who knows how seriously the teams will take this, or if they will even care at all.

But, if they do, wow. This could just be awesome to watch.

Worst comes to worst, we’ve still basically got a bloated version of the Autumn Nations Series with some funky paint, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

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