Rugby Union of Russia Executive Vice-President Howard Thomas has heralded the performance of Europe’s emerging nations during the November internationals and predicts that this year's rebranded Rugby Europe Championship will be the best and most unpredictable yet.
Georgia have dominated Europe’s second-tier competition for the last six years but with improvements in playing standards across the board and Rugby World Cup 2019 qualification points at stake for their rivals, Thomas believes the Lelos won’t have it all their own way.
“November was a fantastic period for European rugby, and not just the Six Nations’ teams whose performances are well-documented,” he said.
“Romania had some fantastic results and won all three of their games, Georgia did not necessarily get the results they were after but their performances were very good, Russia retained the Cup of Nations in Hong Kong, Spain beat Uruguay and Germany beat Uruguay and Brazil and that all leads in to what should be a fantastically competitive first year of the Rugby Europe Championship.”
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD
Thomas does not believe there is a single weak team amongst the group of six, newly-promoted Belgium included.
“Belgium clubs haven’t done very well in the European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR) qualification tournament but the national team will be strong on the basis that they can get all their French-based players released. I don’t think there is going to be an easy game and I think there will be some surprising results.
“We’re very proud of what we have done to rejuvenate our competition structures and we are very excited by the quality of rugby we expect to see over the next few months.
“What it is showing is that Rugby Europe is going from strength to strength, whether it is men’s and women’s 15s or sevens.“
FRENCH MODEL
As Rugby Europe’s Chairman of Marketing and Commercial Commission, Thomas has been a key driver in upgrading the status of the competition formerly known as European Nations Cup Division 1A.
Rugby Europe television will cover all 15 matches from the Championship, which will have a new bonus points system in place for 2017.
“We’ve adopted the French model for try bonus points whereby an extra point is awarded to teams who have scored at least three tries more than their opponent. We feel this will keep interest in games for longer than the traditional four tries scored method," he explained.
“However, we’ve maintained the seven points or less model for a losing bonus point instead of five as they have in France.
“We were also the first organisation to announce that we’d be implementing a Grand Slam bonus so that a team winning all five games would be the champions regardless of how many bonus points they earned. It was pleasing to see the Six Nations adopt this too, as it supports our thinking.”
PLAY-OFF
Promotion and relegation between the Rugby Europe Championship and Trophy, the next rung down on the competition ladder, will now be decided by a play-off between the bottom-ranked Championship team and the winner of the Trophy, as opposed to the old one up, one down system.
As Georgia have already qualified for RWC 2019 courtesy of their third-place pool finish at England 2015, results against the Lelos – over this year and next – will not count towards qualification for the next tournament in Japan.
Opening fixtures (all 11 February)
Germany v Romania
Belgium v Georgia
Spain v Russia
Photo credits: Gogita Bukhaidze (Georgia) and Sportkipik.be (Belgium)