North v South - the battle for global supremacy is tighter than ever

Image source, BBC Sport Image caption, Scotland's Finn Russell and New Zealand's Ardie Savea will be two of the superstars to collide in the Nations Championship By Mike Henson BBC Sport rugby union news reporter Published 5 minutes ago The scoreline is emphatic: 9-1 and counting. When it comes to Rugby World Cups, nine of the 10 have been lifted by southern hemisphere hands. Only Jonny Wilkinson's extra-time drop-goal for England in the 2003 final stands between the south and a clean sweep of global glory. So, a new Test competition pitting one half of the globe against the other will be long-haul, but intrigue-short. Won't it? Perhaps not. The Nations Championship, which begins this weekend, might be a concept arriving at the perfect time. What is the Nations Championship? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Figure caption, How does the Nations Championship work? First, a quick recap. The Nations Championship pits the northern hemisphere teams who compete in the Six Nations - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy - against southern hemisphere giants South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, plus invited sides Fiji and Japan. The geographically observant will note that Japan is actually about 2,500 miles north of the equator, so doesn't sit in the southern hemisphere. But the sport is rolling with it, somewhat in the spirit of Australia's participation in Eurovision. All teams will play each of the six in the opposing hemisphere once, with three rounds of fixtures staged in July and another three in November. Their results will rank the teams within their own hemisphere, from one to six. On the final weekend in November, there is a three-day play-off event staged at Allianz Stadium in Twickenham. The sixth-placed team in the northern hemisphere plays off against the equivalent in the southern hemisphere standings and so on, culminating in the two top-ranked sides taking each other on. The winner of that final match is crowned the inaugural Nations Championship winner. However, there is also a parallel, Ryder-Cup style hemisphere title. The winner of each of the matches on the play-offs weekend will earn one point for their hemisphere, except for the contest between the two top-ranked teams which delivers two. The first hemisphere to earn four points over the weekend will be crowned winners. Southern supremacy challenged For the vast majority of the past 120 years, the southern hemisphere sides have been rugby's jet set. They have won nearly 57% of the 1,062 Tests between the two groups over more than 125 years of action. That win rate has fluctuated over time though. Initial dominance in Test rugby's early days weakened with fixtures drying up for South Africa, one of the south's powerhouse sides, as rugby, fitfully, joined the rest of the world in a boycott of its apartheid political regime. Fiji and Japan, who played their first Tests against top northern hemisp