From the Times this morning -

England line up All Blacks

The Rugby Football Union confirmed last night that it is looking to engineer a game between England and New Zealand in November

England against New Zealand is the game that the world wants to see

The Rugby Football Union confirmed last night that it is looking to engineer a game between England and New Zealand in November this year. England will overtake the All Blacks’ record of 18 consecutive Test victories if they defeat Ireland in Dublin on Saturday and win back-to-back grand slams, but the leading nations in world rugby were not scheduled to meet until the autumn of 2018.

However, the All Blacks are due at Twickenham on November 4 to play the Barbarians and the RFU has approached the world champions to ask whether they would be prepared to tackle England instead. It is the game that the world wants to see but it would be an expensive project for the RFU, which would have to pay New Zealand an appearance fee of up to £3 million because the fixture would fall outside the international window.

The RFU would also have to pay the Aviva Premiership clubs to release their players because England are due to play only three autumn internationals this year. The commercial benefits of playing the All Blacks are vast, however. The autumn schedule is relatively low key for England, with games against Australia, Argentina and Samoa.

The Times understands that the RFU has been concerned that the glamour of a Barbarians-All Blacks game could impact on ticket sales for those three games. Arranging an extra England fixture would contradict the RFU’s official position that there should be fewer international fixtures and its much-vaunted stance on player welfare, especially as 2017 is a Lions year. Elliot Daly is on course to play his part in England’s quest to become double grand-slam champions after he was included in the 25-man squad to face Ireland in Dublin on Saturday.

The wing is going through return-to-play protocols after suffering what the RFU described as a possible concussion in the second minute of Saturday’s 61-21 victory over Scotland. He has passed the first three stages of the protocol but cannot train fully until tomorrow at the earliest. However, Eddie Jones is giving him every chance of playing in Dublin.

The squad includes two travelling reserves, who are likely to be Jonny May, as cover for Daly, and Tommy Taylor. Jones will confirm his line-up tomorrow morning and must decide over the next 24 hours whether to start Billy Vunipola or keep him back to make an impact off the bench. Vunipola scored shortly after coming on against Scotland but admitted that he felt the pace on his first international appearance since suffering a knee injury in November. Nathan Hughes started England’s first four games but Vunipola scrummaged at No 8 with the rest of England’s first-choice pack during yesterday’s training session.

@gollum Simple. Pay half the gate as you were asked originally.

Fuck half the gate. Half the fucking revenue.

Fuck them.

Look (I'll do a @gollum ) it's pretty damn obvious that NZR are trying to engineer (to use the terminology from @gollum's post) more equitable revenue sharing. And it's not just gate takings.

The ERU hate that idea because they will stand to fund the world game.

So NZR is never ever going to agree to a revenue sharing match unless the England Rugby Union agree to revenue sharing in the longer term.

Am surprised this isn't glaringly fucking obvious to anyone and everyone.

Some more Rattue bullshit ( do NOT read this @taniwharugby ) does he not realise that three out of the English forward pack are Polynesian?

Also apparently the ABs were not dominant until there were lots of Island players. Pinetree and BG Lochore will choke on their weetbix when they read that tomorrow morning.

One test AB Damian McKenzie gets a mention because he is part Maori and therefore awesome. Ben Smith and Beauden Barrett are pasty and white and therefore not worth a mention and are shit.

@MN5 North Island, South Island, Chatham Islands.

I think this is hilarious.
All of a sudden the tune has changed. We have previously offered to play England as an 'extra' game if they are prepared to stump up and the RFU have told us to fuck off, they don't need us and would rather make lots of money selling out Twickers to nobs wanting to watch England thrash someone who will play for a pittance.
Now they are in form and on a roll they want a crack outside of the schedule to try and take number one world ranking. Tew will be pissing himself knowing he now has the upper hand in negotiations and will be looking to set a long term deal.

Personally I don't think this is a good time for the match for the ABs though. We have a Lions series which doesn't allow a lot of player development and three EOYT matches already lined up that we have to squeeze new players into.
We have already seen that by the end of the year we are just hanging in there and this would probably disrupt existing longer term plans.

Its not a great time for us to play them, but if it can be leveraged into a revenue share deal longer term it should definately be chased by Tew. If they could weasel a 5 year deal where we play England at Twickers every year & get a 30%+ rev share thats huge money.

@gollum said in England V All Blacks:

Its not a great time for us to play them, but if it can be leveraged into a revenue share deal longer term it should definately be chased by Tew. If they could weasel a 5 year deal where we play England at Twickers every year & get a 30%+ rev share thats huge money.

Fuck that.

We have always maintained that if England want us to play at Twickers outside of the WR programme it has to be on a 50/50 revenue share.
No need to back down from that.

If the Poms want us that bad pay to play baby! They'll make heaps more than a baabaas game with higher ticket prices anyway

@Crucial said in England V All Blacks:

We have always maintained that if England want us to play at Twickers outside of the WR programme it has to be on a 50/50 revenue share.
No need to back down from that.

We could back down if it gets us 5 games, 1 a year every year, with a rev share. Thats the bigger picture

1 game at 50/50 is good. But 5 tests at 70/30 means we can keep Retallick, Barrett & Coles for 5 years

@gollum said in England V All Blacks:

@Crucial said in England V All Blacks:

We have always maintained that if England want us to play at Twickers outside of the WR programme it has to be on a 50/50 revenue share.
No need to back down from that.

We could back down if it gets us 5 games, 1 a year every year, with a rev share. Thats the bigger picture

1 game at 50/50 is good. But 5 tests at 70/30 means we can keep Retallick, Barrett & Coles for 5 years

I see this from a NZ POV but I'd doubt the RFU would go out on a limb like that. It would be to much of a precedent. It would surprise me if the Autumn 2017 game gets the nod.

@Catogrande said in England V All Blacks:

I see this from a NZ POV but I'd doubt the RFU would go out on a limb like that. It would be to much of a precedent. It would surprise me if the Autumn 2017 game gets the nod.

From an RFU point of view its 5 sold out games, with "name your price" TV over a period where England will be strong & building to a WC, then coming off a WC where its a rerun of the final.

Whats not to like?

The unscheduled one off's are far harder as the clubs have a hissy fit & the ABs do their "3m or piss off" thing

There is already a scheduled game next year that they don't have to share with us and the following year is RWC

@gollum said in England V All Blacks:

@Catogrande said in England V All Blacks:

I see this from a NZ POV but I'd doubt the RFU would go out on a limb like that. It would be to much of a precedent. It would surprise me if the Autumn 2017 game gets the nod.

From an RFU point of view its 5 sold out games, with "name your price" TV over a period where England will be strong & building to a WC, then coming off a WC where its a rerun of the final.

Whats not to like?

The unscheduled one off's are far harder as the clubs have a hissy fit & the ABs do their "3m or piss off" thing

What's not to like is having all the other countries banging on the door for a similar deal. This is especially so as we sell out pretty much every England game (caveat that for some the ticket prices are lower). So for the RFU whilst an increase in revenue would be nice it is likely not worth the potential problems.

Also as @Crucial says. There is already a game next year. Then it is RWC and after that there is always the option of Eng v NZ games being organised within the window.

This smacks to me of the RFU getting a bit arrogant because England are No2 and they feel that they might be able to knock over NZ at Twickenham and that's all.

@Catogrande

I agree from an RFU point of view they just want a 1 off to exploit the current strength, thats all this is about.

But the NZRFU will be trying to leverage a more long term deal, and that not neccesarily terrible from an RFU point of view

@Catogrande said in England V All Blacks:

@gollum said in England V All Blacks:

@Catogrande said in England V All Blacks:

I see this from a NZ POV but I'd doubt the RFU would go out on a limb like that. It would be to much of a precedent. It would surprise me if the Autumn 2017 game gets the nod.

From an RFU point of view its 5 sold out games, with "name your price" TV over a period where England will be strong & building to a WC, then coming off a WC where its a rerun of the final.

Whats not to like?

The unscheduled one off's are far harder as the clubs have a hissy fit & the ABs do their "3m or piss off" thing

What's not to like is having all the other countries banging on the door for a similar deal. This is especially so as we sell out pretty much every England game (caveat that for some the ticket prices are lower). So for the RFU whilst an increase in revenue would be nice it is likely not worth the potential problems.

Except we are only talking about games outside of the WR window. So it is unlikely that, for example, England would arrange a game with Samoa and have Samoa demand 50/50

There are always set costs to hosting a game and it is crazy to expect in a normal arrangement for one party to wear the cost and the other not, so a 50/50 revenue share is unrealistic. A profit share is more likely and even then the RFU would have a baseline expected return for their outlay so lower ticket prices would mean a lower %
With NZ though the tickets would sell instantly, the prices would be high and the profit also high.
Anyway Ian Ritchie needs to eat a fair bit of humble pie if this game is to happen.

@Crucial said in England V All Blacks:
There are always set costs to hosting a game and it is crazy to expect in a normal arrangement for one party to wear the cost and the other not, so a 50/50 revenue share is unrealistic. A profit share is more likely and even then the RFU would have a baseline expected return for their outlay so lower ticket prices would mean a lower %

With NZ though the tickets would sell instantly, the prices would be high and the profit also high.

A 50/50 profit share would only work if both parties are interested in maximising profit. England are not.

If we are going to maximise profit here the game would be hosted at Wembley that has a greater overall capacity but more specifically greater suite capacity. RFU obviously want this at Twickers for many non profit generating reasons and that's totally understandable.

If RFU is waiving the stadium rental fee then the difference between profit and revenue becomes less of an issue providing they aren't playing silly buggers on the TV rights or tickets (i.e. rolling the autumn internationals into a 4 game package and then counting the NZ fixture as 1/4 of the value) etc

@rotated said in England V All Blacks:

@Crucial said in England V All Blacks:
There are always set costs to hosting a game and it is crazy to expect in a normal arrangement for one party to wear the cost and the other not, so a 50/50 revenue share is unrealistic. A profit share is more likely and even then the RFU would have a baseline expected return for their outlay so lower ticket prices would mean a lower %

With NZ though the tickets would sell instantly, the prices would be high and the profit also high.

A 50/50 profit share would only work if both parties are interested in maximising profit. England are not....

And that is it in a nutshell.