The Nations Championship 2026, Southern Leg, Overview

 Before I dive into this, I want to say that I’ve watched 17 of the 18 games (weird broadcasting choices meant I missed Japan v Italy) and enjoyed watching most of them. At least 12, maybe more. So, as a spectacle, at least for a rugby tragic like me, it’s been great. 

As a competition, The Nations Championship, I don’t care. I’m aware of who is ranked where in each table, but that’s because I’ve spent time haunting various websites that are shoving that information in my face rather than any real interest. Maybe, come finals week, I’ll care more, but I doubt it. However, it’s brand new. Maybe in ten years time I’ll care more when there’s some history to it, and some rivalry has built up. But at the moment, there are some rivalries, but they’re more within the groups than between them. In August New Zealand and South Africa are going to have The Greatest Rivalry series. There are definitely rivalries between the Home Nations that are over a century old, nearly 150 years now, and played out every year. Rivalries with the French go back a slightly shorter period, but still well over a century now. Between these groups, there is definitely a rivalry between New Zealand and Ireland over the last decade or so, but I can certainly remember when the Irish, home or away, were simply another easy beat for the men in black. As Rennie rebuilds the AB and Farrell needs to refresh the Irish but seems unwilling or unable to do so, we may be returning to that era. Otherwise, there are some tough lineups, yes, but not long-standing rivalries.

That lack of rivalry and importance for the competition doesn’t mean the players strive any less. At this point, 15 months out from the next World Cup, coaches are, by and large, looking to fill out their squads, check depth for injury cover and the like. You would say, for example, Rassie, and for slightly different reasons Galthié, have done that. To some extent Townsend and Fast Eddy have too. There are others in this camp, but that's enough to show the style. That’s not true for all of them of course. This year, Tandy and his team have had eight tests to try and look at their pool of potential players. Tandy himself has had longer, but his wider team only came into place just before this year’s M6N. They have also be introducing that pool of players to the new systems that they have brought in. Both are seemingly successful, even though there have certainly been some hard loses, albeit with visible improvements from the team, along the way. Meanwhile Borthwick et al have been striving to turn around a disastrous M6N, where England went from a glorious 2025 to only winning one from five. Australia were on a farewell well for outgoing coach Joe Schmidt. It's hard to be sure what they were up to with at least some of their selections. That makes it hard to tell what's going on, with the results because the coaches are looking for, and doing, different things. In the next version, that will be even more true. That will be in 2028, post World Cup, and there will be significant changes in personnel both on the field and in the coaching teams across the teams.

How should the coaches feel?

I am not going to go through all 12 of them, I'm going cherry-pick the ones where I think there's something important something to say.

• Borthwick. I think with wins over Fiji and Argentina, he will have put any serious calls for him to be fired on hold, again. There is definitely a vocal subset of England supporters who think he's out of his depth. I'm inclined to agree, so I'm happy he's going to remain in charge. Discipline will remain a major concern, more on this below.
• Rennie. Although I think Razor had a plan, it's not a plan that most of NZ could get behind. Rennie has come in with a different plan that is closer to the traditional way most of NZ plays rugby and it worked really well for them. There are teething issues, of course, but a tough match against the French, followed by good wins over Italy and a full-strength Ireland were good signs. Four tests against the Bokke in South Africa will be a much stiffer test, but I think winning one, maybe even two, is not beyond them.
• Farrell. If you've been reading my blog for any time, you'll know I'm not impressed by Farrell, particularly his ability to phase out players near the end of their careers and bring in younger ones. This tour felt like it ripped those cracks wider open. The old heads beat a misfiring Australia - a much weakened French team beat them handily the next week - and got destroyed by the All Blacks. When some younger heads were unleashed against the mighty Japanese, they looked poor, although at least they won.
• Quesada. Italy will have travelled with high hopes. Not of beating the All Blacks, but they would have expected to beat Japan and hoped to beat Australia, at least until Menoncello was unavailable. No wins, a drubbing by Australia, one of only two teams to get a red card, there are some tough lessons to learn. Italy will face South Africa, Fiji and Argentina and might win only one game from six.
• Galthié. I think, on reflection, Gathié will be more upset with the close loss to the AB than I said at the time. Not deeply unhappy, it was a good performance from an appreciably weakened team, but it was also the time to take the AB as they were getting used to the new systems. However, on balance, a team shorn throughout of the likes of Dupont, LBB and Ramos, and against the AB with nine other players from Toulouse and Montpelier, went out and performed very well. France are ranked first in the North table, with two wins and four bonus points. There were a mix of debutants, young players with relatively few caps, new combinations (was Ntamack at 10 and Jalibert at 15 on anyone’s bingo card for the series, let alone the year? Was that second half against Australia in anyone’s predictions?) and basically they all paid off. Galthié has the best kind of headache with his selections come next autumn, but he also knows as the likes of Baille, Marchand etc reach the end of their careers, and whatever injuries arise, he’s got players available to step up.

Discipline

I mentioned discipline as a major concern for Borthwick. Looking through all the stats, the average number of penalties conceded was 27.83, or basically 9 per team per match. Three teams (Italy, New Zealand and South Africa) were tied on 24 as the lowest, Fiji on 37 were the highest. 

Note that Italy and Fiji were the only teams to lose all their matches, but were at opposite ends of the penalties conceded table. However, South Africa and New Zealand, the two teams who won all their matches were at the bottom of the penalty count. 

If you count the difference in penalties between winning and losing sides over the 18 matches, it's slightly better to be awarded fewer penalties. That is, you’re more likely to win if you are less penalised, but it’s not a strong indicator. In general, penalty counts are pretty close though, unless England and Fiji are involved, they're giving away on average, two or three, respectively, more penalties per game and whether that's points, territory or lost opportunities to score, it's affecting their game.

When it comes to cards, Italy and Fiji were both shown red. My first thought was that this feels high, over the 15 games of the M6N there was only one, but they're rare enough that perhaps two in 18 games is a more normal average. However, in SRP there were six red cards across 77 matches, so one every 12.8 games was their average. That would mean two in 18 is slightly above expectations, you'd expect 1.4, so two is not unreasonable, 1 in 15 is about right. So it seems like perhaps this competition was a bit unlucky to be so high, but not unreasonably so.

For yellow cards, almost every team is in the 0-2 range. Ireland were shown none, Wales, Scotland and Italy one each (but Italy also got shown a red remember) and everyone else except the three teams I'm about to name and shame was shown two yellows. France were shown three, Argentina four (it's worth noting three of these were in one game where the referee lost control). And England were shown six. Granted, four were in that same game against Argentina, but they were getting a card per game anyway. Statistically speaking, England are an outlier for the number of cards, above the 95% CI for the data. There's quite a bit of data that says, on average, a yellow card costs you seven points. It wasn't true in this set of 18 matches, in particular, but if it had been, England were effectively giving their opponents a nine-point head start. Cheers, guys!

More seriously, England were second in penalties conceded and first in yellow cards. They were the only team in the M6N to be shown a red card. They were also the team shown the most yellow cards with nine over the five games, of 26 total. They got over 1/3 of the yellows in a contest with six teams… ouch. This is an ongoing problem for them. By contrast, Wales who were second for yellow cards in the M6N with seven conceded four in their first match, three in the next four, and only one in these three. Since that moment, Wales have won two, lost five, four yellows. England have likewise won two, lost five, but have been shown 13 yellow cards. Wales obviously worked on this, why can’t England? (On the other hand, please keep on not bothering.)

I feel a bit rotten calling out France and Argentina for being high, but when everyone else is in the 0-2 range, three and four yellow cards does seem high. I don't think either coach will be particularly worried by the number. They were all correct calls, but not systematic problems.

Final Thoughts

As a competition, a championship, meh. I’m not invested in this north v south malarkey, and maybe that will come in time, maybe not. But the majority of the games have been great, so as a spectacle I’ve enjoyed it. Is it better than the traditional July test series? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s too early to tell. However, thinking back to last year, Scotland, for example, took a junior team and toured the americas. I’m not particularly a Scottish fan, but watching their youngsters thrash Chile was not enlightening, although it was possibly good for the development of Chilean rugby. The All Blacks v France series, despite being 3-0 to the AB, was much more interesting, with two close games and watching not only each game, but the series unfold. There is a magic to those three test series with move and counter-move, the excitement of the first test and then the response to the outcome of that match and so on. This removes that. I know, given France toured NZ last year, we wouldn't have seen them in NZ again this year under normal circumstances. But I doubt I'm the only one interested in knowing whether the reinforced French against the AB who were slightly more settled into the Rennie game plan would have won at all. I would guess probably yes, but we'll never know.

This competition is also weirdly structured. In this half, the northern hemisphere sides are trucking all over the globe. I think France had the biggest journey. They flew to New Zealand, then to Australia (East Coast), then to Japan, then home. Italy may have had it worse, they did out to Japan, then to Australia (West Coast), then New Zealand, then home. Whilst I think the reasons are rubbish, with Fiji being banned from hosting in Suva, England, Wales and Scotland dodged the South Africa, Fiji, Argentina route - England would have had it in that order - with two 30h+ flights in the middle there. That would almost certainly have been the longest in time, maybe in distance too. Come November, Fiji have the short straw, France, Ireland, Italy then London. The longest of those flights is just over four hours, about the same as the shortest of the southern hemisphere flights (Auckland to Brisbane is around 3.5 hours).

Is this just a grumpy old woman shouting at clouds? To some extent, yes. I'm not opposed to change, I have liked quite a few of the law changes over the last few years - I like 50-22's, I like goal-line drop outs for held-up in goal. I don't mind no scrum from a free kick. I like all the timers on kicks, scrums, lineouts etc. I don't really mind what players do prior to the lineout actually starting, have a huddle, have kiss and a cwtch, charge straight in and take it quickly, whatever, but do it reasonably quickly! But this new championship feels too contrived and has too many rough edges. Is there any peril? At the moment, we know South Africa are the best team in the world. We know France and New Zealand are chasing them and may overtake them, or may not, by the end of next year. The Irish, Scottish, English, Argentinian and Australian fans desperately want to believe they'll be the ones making up the numbers, and the given the way the draw is set up, two of them will be happy. Whoever wins this competition - almost certainly the Boks, so what?