‘2024 will be the year rugby finally finds stability… I hope’
When it comes to rugby it is difficult to know what exactly is in store for us across 2024. There’s no World Cup or Lions Tour to steal the headlines so the sport will need to work especially hard to remain relevant. But there are opportunities, and that’s something the sport must exploit.
Here’s my take on what we could expect from the coming months.
England in Europe
I cannot say I expected the English sides to be going so well after two of the four pool rounds of the Investec Champions Cup and Challenge Cup, but it’s a welcome surprise.
With all of the talk surrounding the state of the game in England and the restrictions placed on the game due to governance and, sometimes, apparent incompetence it is good to see some of our teams fighting on the biggest fronts.
I don’t think we will see a change from recent years and see an English team reach the final – the load on the Premiership teams is heavy at the moment – but it would be good to see some of the sides really push on and show themselves to be as competent in the knockout stages as they have been in the group stages.
It’s one thing qualifying for the knockouts when four of the six teams in each pool progress but it is another thing to win one-leg matches when everything is on the line.
The Investec Champions Cup has thus far been a superb watch for both rugby nerds and casual fans, and it is the kind of product we need to see being rammed down the throats of the neutrals and undecided viewers.
An English winner would be delightful, but a competitive Premiership offering on a European footing would be equally good to see.
Big year for Borthwick
I think Steve Borthwick simply achieved at the Rugby World Cup. He neither went below or above my expectations of what I thought that England team were capable of doing.
But in 2024 fans cannot blame Eddie Jones for the hangover seen in 2023. It is all on Borthwick.
And with that in mind, I hope England don’t finish second or third in the Six Nations without changing up their game and assume everything they’re doing is dandy. Because in the summer they’re heading down to New Zealand and will be humbled if that’s their mentality.
I hope they realise they need to add some strings to their bow and develop a number of game plans that can be adapted to beat any side they face.
Women on the rugby march
With England hosting the 2025 Women’s World Cup, 2024 is monumental for the Red Roses. They are, yet again, overwhelming favourites for the Six Nations next spring but their journey is now about more than that.
It’s about crowds, inspiring a generation and giving fans a reason to turn out in their thousands at the World Cup – like recent cricket, football, rugby and Olympic teams of various disciplines are able to do.
I also hope the women’s game doesn’t fall into the hole of trying to simply replicate the men’s game.
Whether plans develop for a women’s Lions team that tours France rather than Australia or if the women’s team choose to take their international matches around the country rather than hogging Twickenham, they need to be unapologetically themselves and block out the suits forcing them to conform with the men.
Olympic highs
As a former sevens player the idea of Antoine Dupont representing France at the Olympics is almost salivating.
The pocket rocket was the home star at the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and will be the poster boy of the sevens game in 2024.
Very few players, if any, will finish a career being able to represent their country at both the Olympics and Rugby World Cup within a year of each other so the feat is quite extraordinary.
We heard Lord Coe say that athletics is struggling to sell Olympic tickets at the Stade de France so this is an opportunity for that stadium to be remembered for the rugby sevens rather than track and field.
I think TeamGB will struggle to pick up a medal this time around but there’s still time.
The state of rugby
I think everyone will agree that the sport needs a year of stability in England and beyond. We 2023 saw teams go bust and players left out of contract at short notice and that’s an awful advert for the game.
There is set to be a new Professional Game Agreement this year and I hope rugby’s chiefs look to France rather than the URC. The URC is brilliant and growing ever more competitive but France is about to professionalise its third division and that’s what England’s player pool needs.
There are super clubs across the rugby pyramid and we must make best use of them to maintain interest in the game at grassroots level.
And finally the sport must address the elephant in the room: concussion. More is being done now than ever before but we have an issue in the sport when parents are scared to let their kids play the game.
Rugby must do more to demonstrate that it is a safe sport and a continued tackling of concussion is key to that.
I am hoping 2024 is a year when we stop talking about attendances and clubs going under. I hope it is a year of positivity for the game. But having been around the sport for decades, I can guarantee a surprise or two will jump out at us at some point.
Former England Sevens captain Ollie Phillips recently swam the English Channel to raise money for Head for Change, a charity aspiring to achieve positive change for brain health in sport. Follow Ollie on Twitter to donate.