Premiership Rugby in support of the global season

Premiership Rugby chief executive Mark McCafferty has urged top bosses of World Rugby to solve the conundrum surrounding the global calendar.

The international fixtures have been announced until the 2019 World Cup and World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont has already revealed his plans to integrate the Northern and Southern hemisphere. The organisers of Pro12 recently suggested that the Six Nations could be shifted by six weeks which will allow more international players to compete in the club competitions.

Refusing the idea of shifting Six Nations, McCafferty said the board needs to find a solution for the best interest of club and international tournaments.

"We don't like that particular idea, but we do have some of our own ideas and concepts.

"But we think that the best thing to do is to get all the main stakeholders in one building at one time and to work through it, b ecause we've got some fairly strong views ourselves about separating the club and the international calendar more.

"That's the next part of our development, to try to get a greater distinction there between the international and the club game.

"That's one concept, but we've also got to listen to others."

Describing the current international fixtures as "unsustainable", McCafferty believes a collective effort is needed in order to find a solution to the global calendar issue.

"I think the international season structure is unsustainable as it is at the moment.

"It's coming to a head for sure. We're talking about what happens after the World Cup in Japan in 2019, so we've got to focus a few years out.

"There are parts of the global game where there is opportunity that needs to be developed, and opportunity needs to be given to certain parts of the game that are potentially growing.

"And as ever there are some threats to the game which need to be addressed.

"So all of those have got to go into the mix, and I think that's coming to a conclusion.

"But I don't think you can really make any progress by just lobbing out individual ideas there, without getting in a room and trying to work through it.

"It's very complicated, it's very inter-related, and nobody really can act unilaterally, we've got to do it collaboratively."

Pro12 is currently exploring opportunities to include a team from the United States. However, McCafferty said the Premiership has no such plans to expand beyond the English clubs.

"We are an English league, that's where our strength is. We've certainly no plans to change," he said.

"We'll look to grow our profile in the States for sure, and we've made a couple of big breakthroughs on that last season.

"It's about gaining profile for the Premiership competition in the States rather than basing any teams there.

"We're just putting together some last-minute details on our fixture in the US for the season. It will be a few weeks before we're able to confirm everything, but it will happen."