Raeburn Shield

[Scan]

Anyone heard of the Raeburn Shield. I stumbled across this: http://www.espnscrum.com/worldcup/rugby/story/134739.html literally only a few minutes ago and it seems like a brilliant concept.

The link up there is more detailed but, basically, it's a hypothetical trophy that some lad came up with. It's a world ***le that is won on a challenge system like in boxing or the Ranfurly Shield where the holder of the ***le has to defend it in every test match they play.

The lad that came up with it went back to the first ever test (Scotland beat England) and decided that Scotland would have been the inaugural winners and then traced the trail all the way up to modern days.

Apparently, even Romania and Samoa (but not Italy) have been 'world champions' under this system.

It sounds like a great idea coz it would:

- give smaller nations like Fiji and Georgia a chance to be world champions
- it would give the likes of the Celtic nations and Argentina a more realistic chance of being world champions
- it would be WAY more exciting than the World Cup which I thought was a bit of a dissapointment this year

The IRB ignored the idea but yer man is still trying to get the Raeburn Shield officially recognised. It will probably never happen coz the IRB make a lot more money out of a World Cup than they ever would out of a World ***le Challenge Series but I am definitely gonna 'follow' the Raeburn Shield from now on.

The problem is though that the Official Raeburn Shield website is down and the article I linked to is over a year old so I don't know who the current 'holders' are. Anyone know?

 

[Scan]

I found out who the Shield holders are. The All Blacks. As it should be.

Apparently, they won it off Australia in the World Cup semi-final, so France were playing for TWO ***les in the final.

Next defence is against Ireland next weekend. Can't believe it, I'm even more excited about that match now.

 

[TRF Mr Fish]

It's basically just the TRF Shield...

 

[Thingimubob]

Yupp TRF Shield is where it's at.
Also I loved the last World Cup and would have it over a 'World ***le Challenge Series' (da fock?) anyday

 

[Davesofthunder]

Anyone heard of the Raeburn Shield. I stumbled across this: http://www.espnscrum.com/worldcup/rugby/story/134739.html literally only a few minutes ago and it seems like a brilliant concept.

The link up there is more detailed but, basically, it's a hypothetical trophy that some lad came up with. It's a world ***le that is won on a challenge system like in boxing or the Ranfurly Shield where the holder of the ***le has to defend it in every test match they play.

The lad that came up with it went back to the first ever test (Scotland beat England) and decided that Scotland would have been the inaugural winners and then traced the trail all the way up to modern days.

Apparently, even Romania and Samoa (but not Italy) have been 'world champions' under this system.

It sounds like a great idea coz it would:

- give smaller nations like Fiji and Georgia a chance to be world champions
- it would give the likes of the Celtic nations and Argentina a more realistic chance of being world champions
- it would be WAY more exciting than the World Cup which I thought was a bit of a dissapointment this year

The IRB ignored the idea but yer man is still trying to get the Raeburn Shield officially recognised. It will probably never happen coz the IRB make a lot more money out of a World Cup than they ever would out of a World ***le Challenge Series but I am definitely gonna 'follow' the Raeburn Shield from now on.

The problem is though that the Official Raeburn Shield website is down and the article I linked to is over a year old so I don't know who the current 'holders' are. Anyone know?

Just to let you know the website is back up and running www.raeburnshield.com and there is also twitter if you follow that @raeburnshield

I think the beauty of the concept is that it and the RWC are not mutually exclusive. The All Blacks won the RWC and that is awesome and now we are seeing how long they can hold that legitimacy for (8 matches in the current tenure with the shield) and then for the intervening 4 years there is something interesting happening.

Argentina today had their first challenge since 2006 and have not held it since the 80s! so if they had of know it could be that bit of extra spice. (not that they needed it as they were pretty damn good already!)

Cheers

Dave