Writer Sam Larner rails against rugby’s scheduling of fixtures
THURSDAY 18TH of April started a long weekend of French rugby where both the ProD2 and Top14 were in action. If you made the trip, you could watch Provence v Mont-de-Marsan on Thursday at 9pm, then Soyaux-Angouleme v Brive at 7pm on Friday, followed by five matches at 7.30pm in ProD2. You could cap the night off with Biarritz v Grenoble at 9pm. The Top14 came in on Saturday with games at 3pm, 5pm, 9pm, with a further match at 9pm on Sunday. That’s eight distinct time windows and seven games you could watch in their entirety.
That same weekend also had English Premiership action. Just five matches needed to be accommodated there rather than the 15 the ProD2 and Top14 have to juggle. Two of the Premiership matches kicked off at 3pm on Saturday, one at 5.30pm and the other two at 3pm on the Sunday.
Rugby does a lot of things right, far more than most of us fans would give it credit for, but there is an enormous blindspot when it comes to fixture planning. The Six Nations has also dropped the ball. The fixtures for the 2025 men’s tournament are already out and they’re a mess. It’s reasonable to assume that France and Ireland will be battling it out for top spot and yet they face each other in the early match in round four. That leaves Super Saturday devoid of a significant match-up. We have Wales v England as the middle of the three matches, but with Wales’ recent form that no longer looks as appetising as it once did. Six Nations, this is your tournament, manipulate it to get the biggest match-ups
