Rugby: Get ready for rugby six days a week

Sky's director of sport, Kevin Cameron, says there will be a few challenges to manage but it will be workable. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Provincial rugby will be played every night except Monday as organisers squeeze the competition in between the expanded Super 15 series and the World Cup.

Unions decided they did not want to further trim the revamped twin pools of seven teams and turned down ideas about operating a reduced ITM Cup competition format. The competition would run over about two months.

"There will be a few challenges to manage but it will be workable and we are getting close to finalising the schedules," Sky's director of sport, Kevin Cameron, said.

"It looks likely we will be operating most evenings and in the last few years we have built up our numbers so we can cope with that. We also have to be mindful, though, of looking after our people who will also have been working through the Super 15 tournament and will be doing the World Cup."

There are plans for split rounds of the ITM Cup to run from Tuesday night through to multiple matches in the weekend, adding Tuesday and Wednesday night matches to the roster used last season.

Cameron said the planning was still being worked through but it was possible two games might be held on a weeknight at 6pm and 8pm.

"There will be new challenges for teams as well as us because sides may be playing on a Tuesday then a Sunday to allow us to get through the schedule in the allotted time."

The Super 15 final will be played on July 9 while the World Cup starts on September 9, leaving a tight window for the ITM Cup to be completed.

While the series will be shoehorned into a very demanding calendar for the players, the All Black selectors may be able to use the tournament to test the fitness of some players returning from injury or to gauge others on the bubble of World Cup selection.

At the same time the All Blacks' shadow tournament squad will be tackling the truncated Tri-Nations series, which starts for them against the Springboks in Wellington on July 30 and ends against the Wallabies in Brisbane on August 27.

This year provinces ranked 1-7 will play each other in the ITM Premiership and sides who qualified 8-14 will play in the Championship and will also play four crossover matches against provinces from the other division - with the series compressed into an eight-week framework.

After the round-robin games from July 14 to August 28, the finals will be on September 3 with the last side in the Premiership relegated and the winner of the Championship group promoted to next year's premiership.

The Premiership sides are Canterbury, Auckland, Waikato, Wellington, Taranaki, Bay of Plenty and Southland while the Championship will be sorted out between Hawkes Bay, Counties Manukau, Northland, North Harbour, Tasman, Manawatu and Otago.