This week’s official launch of the Six Nations Championship prompted the thought that the next few weeks will go a long way towards confirming whether the undermining of European international rugby by English and French clubs will be a permanent issue for the sport.

It was certainly the most conspicuous negative aspect of this season’s magnificent World Cup which probably produced the finest rugby we have ever seen and was certainly the best of these global tournaments to date.

For the first time in eight stagings of the World Cup all four semi-finalists came from the same hemisphere with the antipodean giants - who were to contest a final that was worthy of all that had gone before - facing South Africa and Argentina in two marvellous matches.

This was no mere blip. English and French clubs may not have specifically set out to undermine the international game in Europe but, in their determination to seize control of the sport, nor did they set out to avoid it.

Since the solitary success of a European team in a World Cup competition, England’s victory in 2003, which was by no means welcomed by some club owners who were already expressing their concern at the time spent by their prized assets on international duty, they have gradually asserted themselves.

Their efforts took its toll first on England, then on France, but it was a source of embarrassment to the rugby communities in those countries that the emphasis on tribal domestic competition was so obviously detracting from their performance on the international scene.

Two competitions exposed that more than any other, the Six Nations Championship, which in spite of the vast demographics in their favour, England and France have won only once apiece in the last eight years and, to their even greater discomfort, the Heineken Cup, which was won five times in a seven year period by Irish provinces.

Identifying the latter problem in particular as being down to the way the Celtic nations, with the Italians in tow, had organised their domestic competition in order to maximise their performance in those tournaments they valued most - just as the Southern Hemisphere countries have done incidentally - English and French negotiators set about forcing change.

Celtic officialdom took an almighty beating in the boardroom when it was outrageously forced into changing the rules of its Pro12, forcing it to emulate the English and French qualification system for European competition, so reducing its effectiveness as a way of developing and protecting players.

Money had already been beginning to talk, but the full toll taken by that changed system became obvious last weekend when not a single Pro12 team made it to the knockout stages of Europe’s top competition for the first time ever.

Just as had been the case previously for the English and French international teams, the impact on the Celtic countries at Test level was meanwhile mere collateral damage rather than the principal objective but, that said, English club owners in particular will have been much less unhappy than most of their compatriots about the unexpectedly early return of their players in the autumn.

The overall outcome, then, is that in effectively following a model that is based on soccer in a sport that makes very different demands of the human body, every club, province, region and professional team in Europe now faces as stretched a schedule as the English and French clubs have become used to over the past decade or so, obviously favouring those capable of assembling vast squads of near American Football size proportions.

While, then, it was darkly amusing during the World Cup, to hear some of the same rugby media men who have effectively been complicit in bringing this about, complaining about the low grade fare to which they were being subjected when forced to return to club games while the big event was still going on, underlying that was a sense of concern for European rugby as a whole.

A first full season of the new-style Pro12 now behind us this Six Nations will be telling, then, in terms of the effect on the competitiveness of the Celts in the Test arena.

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And Another Thing…

Another year, another launch of the Six Nations Championship, a competition which boasts, depending on your outlook, either four or seven capital cities and once again it is held at London.

As a colleague, who was heading down there, responded when that was pointed out yesterday: “Absolutely. And at the street-cred Hurlingham Club to broaden the appeal.”

This is, of course, all about pandering to the English-based media’s view of its own importance which is probably far from misplaced in terms of maintaining the status of what claims to be rugby union’s greatest competition but is increasingly being exposed as an out-dated, closed-shop gentleman’s club to which access is by invitation only.

What used to be more formally known as The International Championship served the sport well for a century and more but these are different times and the likes of Georgia, Romania and, potentially, Portugal and Spain are well worthy of being given the chance to compete for places.

The oft-cited ‘commercial reasons’ should no longer be accepted as a bar to their involvement by those who believe in fair play.

Play up, play up and play the game gents.