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Cape Town - Former Springbok coach Jake White is not a fan of World Rugby's proposed new world league.
The global rugby governing body recently released an outline of a 12-team Nations Championship it plans to launch in 2022.
World Rugby said the competition would be a "two-division, merit-based format with promotion and relegation and a potential pathway for all unions."
White expressed his views via a column for the All Out Rugby website where he warned that the new World League could diminish the prestige of the Rugby World Cup.
"Maybe this is me being selfish as a coach who has won a World Cup, but for the sake of rugby's integrity, we can’t have the top teams playing each other every year.
"Do we really want to be discussing the same question in rugby when we've got the World League champions, the Rugby Championship champions, the Six Nations champions and the Rugby World Cup champions?
"Money is the big motivator behind World Rugby's interest in a global competition, but it’s such a fine line because making rugby bigger, in terms of financial growth, comes with its own dilemmas, as you can see from sports such as baseball, basketball and soccer. It doesn't take long for the players to demand more money, salaries go up and then we’re debating when enough is enough," White wrote.
World Rugby implied that the first league in 2022 would comprise the top dozen teams in the world rankings.
But the governing body provided no explicit assurances Pacific island teams would be included and there have been reports suggesting it would tap the larger television markets of Japan and the United States.
