All Six Nations players to have names on back of shirts
All players will have their names on the back of their shirts in this year’s Guinness Six Nations Championship.
Telegraph Sport understands that the move has been supported in principle by all six unions and is likely to be ratified at a board meeting before the Championship kicks off with France v Ireland on Feb 2.
Unlike in football where players have an assigned shirt number with the club for the season – such as Liverpool’s Trent Alexander-Arnold’s 66, which is boon to merchandising sales – rugby players must wear shirt numbers dependent upon their position for a particular match, ranging from 1 to 23. Traditionalists have opposed bringing in names as they argue it would suggest a player ‘owns’ the shirt and places the individual before the team.
However, the unions are increasingly conscious of rugby’s need to attract more casual viewers who may be unaware of what number stars such as Maro Itoje, Finn Russell or Louis Rees-Zammit wear, particularly with the forthcoming release of the Netflix documentary Six Nations: Full Contact. The idea will be that a new fan watching a game for the first time can instantly identify the players that they are watching.
England and Scotland used players’ names on the back of the shirts for the first time in the 2022 Autumn Nations Series, which they followed through to the 2023 Six Nations together with Italy. “We think player names on shirts may have the potential to bring fans closer to the international stars of our game and we look forward to seeing the reaction to this initiative,” Bill Sweeney, the Rugby Football Union chief executive, said in 2022.
Now Ireland, France and Wales will follow suit in a bid to make the game more marketable towards a younger generation who tend to identify as much with individual players as they do with clubs or even countries. Merchandising sales, where fans can get their favourite player’s name and number on their shirt, will be an added bonus. When Cristiano Ronaldo returned to Manchester United in 2021, the club generated an estimated £187 million in merchandising shirt sales, although rugby lacks such global superstars at present.
There are high hopes within Six Nations circles that Full Contact can do for rugby what Drive to Survive did for Formula 1, by illuminating the personalities and backstories of many leading players that are too often hidden from view. Telegraph Sport understands that Netflix is close to re-commissioning a second series even before the viewing numbers are confirmed.
