BBC ready to fight Sky to show England

Rupert Murdoch's satellite empire has pumped out an unprecedented amount of rugby over the first six seasons of the professional era: sadly for the oval-ball community at large, most of it has been pumped into the ether.

The BBC, secure in the knowledge that a terrestrial broadcaster can deliver an audience measured in millions rather than thousands, is planning to chase the new Six Nations contract when bidding opens in the new year. If it is successful, the big Twickenham occasions will return to the lounges of the dish-less majority in 2003.

"We will be pitching for the live rights to the whole Six Nations tournament," Peter Younge, the head of programmes and planning for BBC Sport, said yesterday. "We want live coverage. Live is everything." At the moment, the BBC do not have live anything as far as the successful and enormously popular England team is concerned.

Red rose home matches currently belong to Murdoch: only recently, the Rugby Football Union struck a joint satellite-terrestrial deal for non-Six Nations games, under which Sky will continue to broadcast live, with the BBC screening "as live" coverage shortly after the final whistle.

According to Younge's managerial colleague, Peter Salmon, the BBC has identified union as a "core sport". However, Younge's comments indicated that the corporation may not be prepared to continue screening live from Wales, Scotland and Ireland if the big fish, England, escapes the net once again. There again, he may have been indulging in a little brinkmanship, in which case he should remember that the last time the BBC attempted to box clever with the rugby fraternity, they had a World Cup contract pinched from under their noses by ITV.

Meanwhile, troubled North-ampton have managed to pinch themselves a very decent second row from South Africa in the shape of Johan Ackermann, a 31-year-old Springbok who has played his recent rugby with the Johannesburg-based Cats – formerly known as Transvaal. Ackermann will report for work at Franklin's Gardens early next month and will therefore be available for the Midlanders' cup quarter-final with Saracens on 20 January.

"Johan has had a distinguished career," said the club's director of rugby, John Steele, overlooking the fact that Ackermann served a two-year ban for steroid abuse after admitting using nandrolone before the Lions tour of Bokke country in 1997. All the same, the newcomer will add extra clout to a heavy-duty Northampton pack featuring five internationals, including the former All Black flanker Andrew Blowers.

Ackermann may be in his thirties, but the southern hemisphere's success in keeping their fixture lists within sensible limits has almost certainly helped prolong his career. The Irish are now attempting something similar. Yesterday, the Irish Rugby Football Union announced that a forthcoming round of the inter-provincial championship, on which qualification for next season's Heineken Cup rests, would be postponed to allow leading players a decent break over Christmas.

Leinster, the form team in the British Isles, were supposed to meet Connacht over the weekend of 29 December, as were Munster and Ulster, two other teams with Heineken Cup ambitions this season. After taking advice from their director of fitness, Dr Liam Hennessy, the IRFU has put those games back to a date yet to be specified. According to the good doctor, the green-shirted élite are so tired after their five autumn internationals, not to mention a collective domination of the latter stages of the inaugural Celtic League competition, that "rest, recovery and maintenance" is of far more value than another 80 minutes of thud and blunder.