Opinion: All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies gamble with Rugby Championship’s relevance amid its greatest edition

Is it the end of the Rugby Championship as we know it, or will the Southern Hemisphere’s premier tournament undergo its biggest restructuring since 2012?

Amid the most competitive edition of the tournament since Argentina’s inclusion, SANZAAR officials are locked in discussions that could spell the end of the Rugby Championship and its predecessor, the Tri Nations, in what can be viewed as a quick cash grab but will inevitably change the shape of international rugby in the south for the next decade at least.

Traditional tours return

The All Blacks and Springboks got the proverbial ball rolling when they opened discussions of old-school, traditional tours a few years ago, with the first edition set to take place in South Africa next year.

The seven-match tour schedule is set to include three Test matches between the old rivals, with a fourth hosted in Europe or the USA, while the All Blacks will also play the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers, and possibly South Africa A too.

In 2030, the Springboks would return the favour, touring the land of the long white cloud for a similar set of matches with the Rugby Championship discarded in both those years as the ‘Greatest Rugby Rivalry’ takes centre stage.

What Argentina and Australia will be up to during the usual international slot for the Rugby Championship in those years remains to be seen, but the idea of the traditional tours’ return has certainly piqued the interest of the latter.

According to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, the Wallabies are set to play two three-Test series in 2028, meaning they could either head to New Zealand for three Tests or host the All Blacks, followed by a similar arrangement with either South Africa or Argentina.

This would mean that 2025 would be the last full version of the Rugby Championship until 2029, a four-year gap, with the 2027 edition truncated because of the World Cup.

It’s a rather farcical idea that these conversations are happening in the background of the most closely fought editions of the tournament, with all four teams in with a realistic chance of clinching the title after four rounds of action. But because of the financial fickleness in the game right now, it’s completely understandable.

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Financial health of the unions

Rugby Australia certainly can’t cry poverty right now, having just benefitted from the financial windfall of the British and Irish Lions series, which wrote off all their outstanding debts, with a lucrative World Cup just around the corner, too.

But their neighbours are undoubtedly more cash-strapped as New Zealand Rugby posted a 2024 loss of NZ$19.5 million, despite achieving a record income of $285 million. South African Rugby is in one of its most fruitful financial eras, wiping out their 2024 debt with a strong start to 2025 following, while their commercial income is set to outperform its broadcasting for the first time since the game went professional.

Still, SA Rugby did not benefit nearly as much as Australia did from the British and Irish Lions tour they hosted four years ago, with all the matches being played behind closed doors – profits they hope to make up with the All Blacks in town next year.

These proposed tours do leave Argentina as the ugly stepchild, with legendary Los Pumas scrum-half Agustin Pichot dubbing the Springboks-All Blacks tour as a selfish decision from the two unions.

“Unions make selfish decisions, and I said it to them, that was a selfish decision,” Pichot told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this month.

“But I have to understand that they’re economically being challenged, and they need income. They thought that just by breaking away, they were going to get more genuine income.

“I don’t disagree with them on that economic part … but again, probably that decision to go with a short strategy and that short-sighted income, out of necessity, it’s a problem in rugby. You go into a more selfish standalone business unit, and at the end of the day, it will have repercussions on your partners.”

We are starting to see those repercussions take shape with Rugby Australia preparing plans for a traditional tour of their own, which is bound to exclude two of the other SANZAAR nations as well and further delay another full edition of the Rugby Championship.

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Becoming like the Euros

So what does this all mean for the future of the Rugby Championship as we know it? Well, if this trend continues, only once in a World Cup cycle will we see a fully-fledged version of the tournament, meaning the once annual event will become something that more closely resembles football’s Euros.

That would certainly buck the global trend with World Rugby pressing for fewer three-match Test series and old-school tours in favour of their Nations Championship concept.

When fans and pundits compare the Six Nations and Rugby Championship, the former is always regarded as the better in terms of its storied history and tradition, and perhaps this is the SANZAAR nations’ reaction to leaning into their own history of tours, albeit at the expense of their premier tournament.

It’s certainly a gamble, but one that fans look to have an appetite for even if, for the first time in a long while, all four teams are firing in the current status quo.

All Blacks and Springboks fans will be licking their lips over the tour matches next year and again in four years’ time, while the Australian public has shown the willingness to pack out stadiums for successive Tests against the same opposition.

If the three ‘bigger’ nations in the SANZAAR organisation do go down this route, Argentina is left on the outer and could be viewed simply as the stopgap when two of the other teams are going head-to-head. But they could benefit hugely too, as could South American Rugby, if Australia agree to tour that side of the world next year, or in 2030. They could host or tour South Africa, too, in 2028.

Ironically, these tours could birth stronger rivalries between all four nations and, in turn, make the prospect of a full Rugby Championship every four years all the more enticing and exciting.

The question that this leaves the SANZAAR organisation is whether the Rugby Championship in its current model is still fit for purpose, or is it much like Super Rugby, where the travel demands and conflicting time zones are just too much to overcome in the modern day? Or is greed once again rearing its ugly head to destroy a competition that is finally blossoming after 12 years of steady growth?

It’s a hit on a hard 16 rather than doubling on 10 against the dealer’s six, and while the consequences of those decisions at the blackjack table are immediate, the SANZAAR nations will only really know if they hit 21 or bust in years, if not decades.

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