Scrapping Summer Tours and replacing them with Cup competitions.

Professional rugby needs to generate revenue for the professional game, yet these summer tours are a mess with New Zealand wanting change.  It's pretty clear that the World Cup generates most of the revenue for the game, so maybe it's time to look at some form of expansion on that.  The game works on a 4 year cycle.  The IRB has now sugggested we move the 6 nations to April just before the summer tours.  Keeping with that, I'd suggest scrapping the November Internationals and Summer tours and simply play our existing 6 Nations and then 1 tournament after it, in this order.

Year 1 - European Cup / African Cup / Asian Cup / Pacific Cup / Americas Cup
Year 2 - Afro-Euroasian Cup / Pacific Cup / Americas Cup OR Pan Pacific Cup / Euro-Afro Cup / Americas Cup
Year 3 - Common Wealth Cup
Year 4 - World Cup

European Cup:
16 teams, 4 pool of 4 teams.  3 Pool games, then the top 4 teams, going into semi finals into a Championship.  The second placed pool 4 teams, go into semi finals for a Plate competition.  The third placed teams going into semi finals for a Shield competition.  The bottom 4 placed teams going into a Bowl competition.  Once the semi finals take place, you have the Final and 3/4 place play off.  Each participating country plays 5 games and has a final placing from 1 to 16.

Afro-Euroasian Cup
As above in terms of organisation, but teams from Europe, Asia, and Africa compete.  8 teams from Europe, 4 each from Asia, and Africa.  

Common Wealth Cup
Much like the Common Wealth games this will be competed for amongst the current Common Wealth countries, top 16 teams qualify off IRB ranking, but no geographical region can have less than 2 teams, (so minimum of 2 from Europe, Pacific, Africa, Asia, Americas).  
Ireland will be included because Northern Ireland is part of the UK.    
Example of eligible teams:  Wales, England, Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Canada, Namibia etc, etc.

World Cup
As it is.

The Autumn Internationals are also big revenue generators and people want to see the big teams play. England - Australia is going to generate more revenue than Georgia - England.

Some of these competitions would end up with Tier 1 nations in a pool with three tier three nations.

For that, I'd rather see more England Saxons matches against countries like Georgia. Perhaps they could be played on European Cup weekends when the Premiership, Pro 12 and Top 14 are NOT playing, giving sufficient player availability (at least, in England and France, and in Wales and Scotland in the knock out stages).

I would run the 6N in the summer and run a Saxons v Tier2/3 competition simultaneously.

mid_gen wrote:I would run the 6N in the summer and run a Saxons v Tier2/3 competition simultaneously.

The Nations Cup and Tblisi Cup have been running in Georgia and Romania for a few years now and the Saxons have yet to take part in any such competition since the Churchill Cup ended

I would rather see a during the summer of a:
6N's A league
with
Saxons A
Georgia A
Romania A
Irish wolfhounds
Scotland A
Italy A
Wales A (They can have one they don't have to designate it as second team)
France A (similar to Wales)

If Wales or France can't be arsed having a A team then invite Spain (There U20's have been brilliant and I feel would have a good chance of exposure in a comp like this)

And have it set in a country rather than having home/away games:
So say in 2017 have a European A cup in Georgia
with pools of

Pool A
England Saxons
France A
Scotland A
Georgia A

Pool B
Ireland Wolfhounds
Wales A
Italy A
Romania A

then have the top 2 of each pool play off for the cup
and the bottom 2 of each pool play off for the plate

And if it grows look to invite countries like Russia, Spain, Belguim's first teams to join if it becomes established enough.

America has something similar with
Argentina XV
Canada XV
USA XV
Chile
Brazil
Urugauy

Maybe SH could do
SA A
Aus A
NZ Maori
Fiji Warriors
Samoa A
Japan A

Then during a Lions year have a competition where all 20 teams come together for a mini A RWC.

Although only really work if Tier 1 teams used it more as a development tool rather than actually send second teams or a team full of senior players like U25/23 teams or something.

Wishful thinking but still could be fun.

Would work better for Europe teams if the 6N's was moved to spring/summer and the Club games finished a month earlier.