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Will Bonus Points Work in This Year’s Women’s Six Nations?

From Last Word on Rugby, Fiona Tomas

As the last ‘warm-up’ competition in the Northern Hemisphere before next years’ World Cup, the 2017 RBS Women’s Six Nations Championship already promises to be an entertaining spectacle, even without the new addition of bonus points to play with.

On paper, the introduction of bonus points in next years’ Six Nations may have convinced the most conservative of rugby gurus that it will favour more competitive and fast-flowing rugby. But there is the daunting possibility that the new format could end up emulating the unofficial ‘two-tier’ table that was nearly introduced three years ago in the competition.

In 2013, the women’s championship was on the verge a dramatic restructuring, when board officials pondered over a ‘two-tier’ Six Nations table amid fears that there was a growing disparity across the participating six countries. This would have seen England, Ireland and France – the three nations who have consistently performed throughout the tournament in recent years – battle it out in tier 1, while Italy, Scotland and Wales would feature in the lower band. Not only would this have jeopardized the competitive nature of the championship, but it would have also signalled a regressive step in trying to breach the gulf between minnows Scotland and as previous seasons have shown, their Welsh and Italian counterparts.

Although such plans never materialized, the introduction of bonus-points – especially the ‘losing’ point awarded to defeated sides who have lost by a margin of seven points or fewer, could prove detrimental to the nations who have traditionally struggled against the top-dogs.

The past two women’s championships have recorded six fixtures where the defeated team has not scored a single point, which is somewhat of a rarity in the men’s competition. These one-sided white washes, not to mention Ireland’s 73-3 drubbing of Scotland in 2015 – by far one of the most one-sided fixtures since the inception of the women’s tournament in 1996, raises questions over whether lower ranked nations would ever benefit from the ‘losing’ bonus points at all.

But these dominant displays have been frequently dotted with closer, low-scoring fixtures too. The past two women’s Six Nations tournaments have produced nine score lines where the losing team has lost within a margin of seven points or less. Couple this with those mammoth victories and the volatile nature of the women’s Six Nations is plain to see.

‘Losing’ bonus points in the 2017 Women’s Six Nations will certainly provide a new dynamic for crunch fixtures. But more significantly, they could end up favouring the more successful nations as opposed to ironing out the differences between the ‘big three’ and ‘bottom three’ – which could simply threaten to become even greater.

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