WELSH RUGBY UNION chairman Gareth Davies feels that a decision to revamp the Six Nations could be made when the tournament organisers meet later this summer.
As part of the overhaul, the tournament could be moved from February to April, with the introduction of bonus points, as well as a promotion and relegation every year.
“There’s a Six Nations council meeting at the end of this month and this isn’t to fuel speculation, it is an annual review of where the Six Nations sits,” Davies told BBC Radio Wales.
“So is it worth considering moving it? Do we look at bonus points, which is something that people have asked for to make it more exciting, scoring tries etc?
“Do we look at ‘is it a closed shop for Six Nations?’ Do we open the gates to Georgia, Romania or anybody else who is deemed worthy and is capable of being in there?
“Moving the Six Nations – I don’t see it as a problem if it helps other things.
“I don’t think we need to move it for the sake of it because it does work where it is now – it gets huge following, huge TV audiences etc.”
There have been further calls for a more unified global calendar, with concerns over the increasing number of fixtures that the players have to face on an annual basis.
“If it were necessary to move it in order that it were a piece of the jigsaw that enabled northern and southern hemispheres to have a coherent global season, then it’s worth doing.”
“The main reason for the global season is player welfare, to try to cut down the numbers of games players are playing,”
“Our guys were in New Zealand in June, July. They started training the first week of June the previous year.The New Zealand guys couldn’t get over it. These guys had been going for 13 months playing international rugby – that is not sustainable.
It is understood that new World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont would also be in favour of a change to the rugby calendar.
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