SANZAAR pushing to play The Rugby Championship in 2020

SANZAAR has moved onto a war footing in terms of getting The Rugby Championship up and running this year.

The All Blacks perform the haka before The Rugby Championship Test and Bledisloe Cup match against Australia at Eden Park last August. Picture: Getty Images

South Africa has returned to training this week while Argentina is likely to lift its ban on foreign travel on September 1 and suddenly SANZAAR has moved onto a war footing in terms of getting The Rugby Championship up and running this year.

“The powers-that-be really want the TRC to happen in some form, they are desperately trying to make it happen,” a senior SANZAAR official told The Australian on Monday. “The value is so much greater than Super Rugby.”

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Although Rugby Australia has already announced that it will stage four Bledisloe Cup Tests this year, two on either side of the Tasman, interim chief executive Rob Clarke admitted that considerable work was now going into broadening the Test program to also include the world champion Springboks as well as the Pumas.

“We are hopeful of having a full Rugby Championship,” Clarke told The Australian. “One of the options is to have it in one country, either here or in New Zealand, which would make sense from a geographic point of view. And if that can be achieved with the governments’ support, then it is something that we should support.”

Clarke admitted that even with midweek Tests to be staged at the tournament “hub”, The Rugby Championship could take more than a couple of weeks to stage, which would lend a mini-World Cup feel to the event.

How any profits of the tournament would be distributed and whether any spectators will be allowed into grounds are still to be determined. Certainly New Zealand’s South Island has been coronavirus infection-free for a number of weeks and if that trend continues once NZ begins its domestic Super Rugby competition within a fortnight, Test rugby could once again be played in front of live audiences.

The timing of the tournament also remains up in the air. But indications are that with spring tours to Britain and Europe by the Wallabies, All Blacks and Springboks having little chance of going ahead in November, it would be possible for SANZAAR to stage the TRC towards the end of the year if need be.

The question Australian rugby is now asking itself is whether sufficient talent will remain in Australia at that time for a quality side to be chosen. Or will there be a mass exodus overseas?

RA’s deal for players to take, on average, a 60 per cent pay cut expires on September 30, a date that Clarke sees almost as a deadline for his task of securing some certainty for Australian rugby.

“My goal is to have the future financial security of the business for 2021 and beyond mapped out by then, so that everyone who works in the organisation, including the players, can have some level of certainty,” he said.

For that to happen, Clarke will have needed to secure a long-term broadcaster and given that he has not at this point secured a short-term broadcasting arrangement – though he has high hopes for the way his discussions with Fox Sports are progressing – he admits he has his work cut out.

“They (Fox) need to manage their programming and content planning and we need to launch a competition. The discussions have been very detailed and positive and I am hoping they will lead to the outcome we want.”

As for the long-term deal, he is taking it one step at a time. “Closing out this year’s broadcast is a key priority. And then focusing on next year and beyond, that becomes the next priority.”