The Wallabies and Ireland should really do this more often. That is, play rugby matches against each other in Australia. After the ex-pats helped swell the attendances of that absorbing three-test series in 2018, the wonder is that Ireland haven’t been back again until now.
The pity remains that the traditional three-Test tours have been sacrificed on the altar of the Nations Championship. Ireland’s win would have set up an Australian revenge mission next Saturday. Instead, Australia host France in Brisbane with both sides having lost their opening matches.
Hence the Wallabies are virtually in must-win territory, if they are to be in contention at the top of the southern hemisphere table, bearing in mind New Zealand and South Africa will both be favoured to win at home against Italy and Scotland next Saturday.
The Wallabies finishing well down the southern hemisphere table at the end of the six-match series in November and being left to contest one of the lower play-off places would not be a good look less than a year out from hosting the World Cup.
Ireland are in competition with their Six Nations rivals in targeting a high finish in the ‘northern’ table, ideally first and with it a place in the inaugural final at Twickenham on November 29th. Therefore, it is also in Ireland’s interest that Australia beat France next Saturday and that South Africa and Argentina win at home to Scotland and Wales.
Therein lies another complex aspect to this Nations Championship, as no team is in direct competition per se with the six teams they will face in 2026, but rather they are vying for final ranking places with teams from their own hemisphere.
So it is that the Ireland squad woke up on Sunday morning after their dramatic five-point haul to discover they were above France and England in the northern hemisphere table, but below Wales and Scotland.
Another of this new competition’s anomalies saw Wales accrue five points from their 39-24 win against Fiji in what was technically an away fixture – in Cardiff. The Fijians will also sacrifice home advantage for their second and third round games against England (in Liverpool) and Scotland (in Edinburgh). Effectively therefore, Wales, Scotland and England will all play four of their six group games in 2026 at home.
In addition, of course, Japan have to host Ireland in Newcastle, a two-hour drive from Sydney in New South Wales, rather than in Tokyo. This means the Brave Blossoms had to undertake a 10-hour flight after their opening 27-10 win over Italy from Tokyo to Sydney, and make the return journey next Sunday before hosting France in their final game.
“You know why we’re playing Ireland in Newcastle, right?” Japan coach Eddie Jones said on the Rugby Unity podcast, of which he is one of the three co-hosts. “Ireland have all the power at World Rugby, so we have to play our home game, which should be in Tokyo, in Australia to make sure Ireland don’t have to travel too much. Let’s be frank about this.”
When co-host David Pembroke asked Jones for clarity, he said: “We just have to suck it up and that’s what happens when you’re not a major political power at the table.”
It’s not the first time Jones has made a comment that has a distinctly anti-Irish whiff about it, and the IRFU certainly do not have all the power in World Rugby. Oh that it were so! But besides which, this is not a World Rugby competition anyway.
Rather it is under the auspices of the Nations Championship, and it’s true that Ireland, the rest of the Six Nations unions and federations, along with their four counterparts in the Rugby Championship, are the competition’s 10 shareholders.
Japan and Fiji have been invited to take part and, in order to do so, the Japan RFU and the Fijian Rugby Union had to agree to sacrifices. But in another sense Jones is completely right. When the fixtures were being devised around 18 months ago and Ireland were drawn to play Australia, Japan and New Zealand this summer, the IRFU made it categorically clear they weren’t going to undertake that excessive amount of travelling between all three countries.
After all, this would have meant that on top of the original long haul from Ireland to Australia, the Irish squad have had to undertake the 10-hour trek by air from Sydney to Tokyo on Sunday after Saturday’s epic.
They would then have to undergo the 11 hour-plus flight from Tokyo to Auckland before the near 24-hour journey home from New Zealand.
Coming a year on from a Lions tour, and at the end of another long hard season when a chunk of the Irish squad took their domestic season to the finals of both the Champions Cup and the URC, that would have simply been too much.
Nor would such an exhaustive trek, with weekly long hauls in the immediate aftermath of competitive Test matches, have been paying even lip service to the notion of player welfare.
Ireland will host Argentina, Fiji and South Africa in November’s northern series, when tables will have taken shape and supporters will generally have a better handle on the structure.
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