Rugby: A grand plan to slam dunk that Southern indifference

The Six Nations remains head and shoulders the best competition in the world game. Photo / Getty Images

It's debatable whether the Northern Hemisphere are better at rugby, but they are certainly better at marketing it than their South Hemisphere rivals.

The North knows how to inject drama and significance into their competitions - never better demonstrated than the value they attach to a Six Nations Grand Slam.

Ireland are being lauded around the world for winning their last five tests. The commemorative Grand Slam merchandise will be rolling off the production line, the tills will ring be chirping away as a nation and its millions of expats buy their slice of history.

The All Blacks, in particular, must look at this with a sense of admiration and jealousy, and mostly the latter.

And understandably because the Southern Hemisphere equivalent, the Rugby Championship which has evolved from the Tri Nations, has never tried to generate similar hype or create any aspirational goal other than winning the title.

Who would have thought that the staid old North, with its gin-swilling men-only clubs and its slave-like devotion to tradition would run rings around the New World in the business of razzmatazz?

But they do. The Six Nations remains head and shoulders the best competition in the world game.

Periodically it has limited raw materials with which to work - Italy are no-hopers, the Celts have been on and off for the last 20 years and England and France more often than not fail to play to their potential - and yet every year you can't buy a ticket for love nor money.

The true genius of the Six Nations, though, is the way they have managed to make a Grand Slam such a high value commodity and so often avoid having various tests tagged as dreaded "dead rubbers".

Think of it like this: Ireland had already won the Six Nations title before the final round of games.

They were the champions and yet they went to London with everything on the line and thousands desperate for tickets. The amazing thing is that Ireland were champions and yet had they lost at Twickenham, they would have felt anything but champions.

The sense of disappointment and failure would have been overwhelming and no one would remember down the track that Ireland won the 2018 Six Nations, only that they blew the chance to win a Grand Slam.

Compare that with the strikingly similar situation that has resulted in the last two Rugby Championships. In both 2016 and 2017 the All Blacks had won the title before their final test.

They went to South Africa for their respective final games undefeated in both 2016 and 2017. Theoretically, the Grand Slam was on the line but no such thing exists so instead, the game was billed as dead.

There was no hype, no drama, no excitement - it was "just another" test, so when the All Blacks did win, the world wasn't in a hurry to consider their achievement of a clean sweep as any kind of an achievement at all.

Which is weird because, with all due respect to the Six Nations, a Rugby Championship Grand Slam is probably the harder to achieve.

Having to win home and away against Australia, South Africa and Argentina is arguably considerably harder than having to beat Italy, Scotland, Wales, England and France just once.

Ireland are an exceptional team and played superbly well to land their Grand Slam, but if there is worth celebrating then surely the All Blacks' is too?

If Ireland are going crazy about winning their third Grand Slam in more than 100 years, then what should the All Blacks be doing?

To put it into context, the All Blacks won a Tri Nations Grand Slam in 1996, 1997, 2003 and 2010 and Rugby Championship Grand Slams in 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2017.

South Africa, in 1998, are the only other team to have won a Tri Nations or Rugby Championship Grand Slam.

No doubt the argument will be made that the Six Nations have a longer and richer history which is why they have come to treasure each Grand Slam.

But at some stage in its 100-plus years, someone must have decided to make a Grand Slam a thing; a big deal.

The Rugby Championship needs to do the same.