WHY, oh why are the rugby authorities so intent on killing the golden goose which is the Six Nations Championship?

It's the crown jewels of Northern Hemisphere rugby, the best tournament in the world even, way ahead of the Tri Nations in the southern hemisphere who are jealous of its success.

Year in, year out the tournament is played in front of capacity audiences, house full signs normally posted up well in advance and millions more watching on television, not just in the UK but all around the globe.

And supporters travel in ever increasing numbers for the matches, for the weekend and for the craic in general.

In Wales, especially, fans save up for two years at a time to pay return visits to the big cities of Ireland, Scotland and France, with Italy becoming increasingly popular, too.

They are the ones who make it all happen, they are the people who make it possible to invest in the game at all levels and they are the ones responsible for those in charge to be paid pretty fat salaries.

Without them, no game, it's as simple as that. But they are becoming increasingly ignored, overlooked and even treated with disdain.

Things have reached a new low with the release of dates and kick off times of matches in next season's Six Nations tournament.

Wales playing in France on a Friday night with a 9pm kick off - what on earth is that all about? And yet more Sunday matches when Wales open in Scotland, with Italy-Ireland and England-France also on a Sunday.

The Friday night game in Paris in particular pays scant regard to the travelling fans who have always thoroughly enjoyed making a weekend of it.

Now they are meant to absent themselves from work, struggle to get to the ground on a Friday night and, worse, still get back into the city to celebrate or drown their sorrows at something approaching midnight.

And the whole weekend concept has gone. Do the fans then trek home on the Saturday when the match should be played anyway, or do they stay through to the Sunday, making the second part of the weekend a complete anti-climax?

And the ever-increasing Sunday dates are pretty much anti-social, too, leaving fans having to get home on a Monday, meaning more time off work and leaving employers increasingly angry at wholesale absenteeism.

Yet WRU chairman David Pickering says that fans will find the times, especially the Friday night innovation, an "attractive proposition".

Just where is he coming from? I can't believe he said that. The dates and the kick-offs are anything but attractive.

To return to the question asked in my introduction, we all know the answer so in a sense it was rhetorical. It is, of course, all down to television and money, he who pays the piper calls the tune and all that.

The TV authorities considered the experiment in the World Cup a success and they want to repeat it, using Wales as a guinea pig. The World Cup comes along every four years whereas the Six Nations is an annual event and the game's bread and butter.

Two of Wales' other five games next season are at 5.30pm, though on a Saturday, and they play just one at 3pm on a Saturday, against Italy in Rome. Whatever happened to the normal Saturday afternoon rugby?

That appears to be almost the last resort now. But it's about time the powerbrokers in rugby took a stand, thought about the fans and said no to this ludicrous idea of playing Six Nations rugby on a Friday night.