SANZAAR boss Andy Marinos believes that staging a full Rugby Championship this year is possible and as early as late October.
“We remain very positive about that,’’ Marinos told Stuff. “The biggest elephant, or anomaly, in the room is what sort of restrictions that could come in. So we always have to be guarded by governments and health authorities around that.
“But we are certainly very positive as a group to deliver a Rugby Championship this year in whichever market we can, where we can get all the teams in and get the competition underway.’’
“At this stage, we are looking at the back-end of October, into November and probably early December,’’ Marinos added. “We need eight weeks for us to deliver a TRC (Rugby Championship).’’
Two of the Bledisloe Cup fixtures between New Zeland and Australia could double as Rugby Championship fixtures.
On the question of a "bubble" in Perth Marinos dismissed this as rumours and said that a "bubble" is not a major priority.
“First of all, there was never really a deep consideration of the bubble. If we were going to create any bubbles we would certainly be looking at the eastern seaboard of Australia for that.
“That’s not to say we couldn’t play a game in Perth, but I think there’s a greater concentration of players if we were to do that - it would be on the eastern seaboard.’’
Marinos also again rubbished numerous reports that Super Rugby will be overhauled from 2021, including the shedding of teams from South Africa and Argentina.
“I have actually been quite bemused by it all because it is more just coming out of certain sectors within New Zealand around not wanting to play in South Africa and wanting to do their own thing,’’ he said.
“It just seems to be a bit of a chorus in this part of the world (Australasia). Sanzaar, as a joint venture, remain committed to working together and whilst we appreciate coming out of 2020 is going to be slightly different, we are busy working through those permutations.’’