England pledged to deliver the biggest and most profitable World Cup after winning the right to stage the tournament in 2015, but the fraught and frantic negotiations that it took to clinch the majority vote at the meeting of the International Rugby Board council in Dublin may cost them a key plank of their bid.
England overcame South Africa and Italy to be granted host status, with Japan given the 2019 tournament. The Rugby Football Union prevailed largely because of the figures it dangled in front of delegates: an estimated sale of 2.8m tickets yielding revenue of £195m – a £102m profit – before VAT, an average of 57,000 spectators every match and a surplus for Rugby World Cup Ltd of an estimated £200m. The sums are based on the grounds which would stage matches, including Twickenham, Wembley, Old Trafford, Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, the Emirates and St James' Park.
Despite England and Japan winning RWC's recommendation, the council vote was close enough, 16-10, for it to be anything but a ringing endorsement of the tournament's organising body.
South Africa and Italy felt the tender process had been weighted in England's favour, with RWC seduced by the figures being floated, but last night the only contrary note was sounded by the Italian Rugby Federation chief executive. Giancarlo Dondi said that while his bid had secured all-party support for government backing to underwrite the event, England had failed to get a similar guarantee.
The RFU will have to go back to the council, by next March at the latest, and gets its consent if the Millennium Stadium is to be included in the 2015 tournament following an IRB ruling earlier this summer that World Cups should be staged in one country unless the host union produces compelling reasons to take matches across a border. A deal had been struck with Wales over staging five pool matches and two quarter-finals in Cardiff in a stadium that holds 74,000 spectators.
With the RFU yet to secure an agreement to stage matches at Old Trafford, South Africa argued that the RFU's tender bid did not add up and they disagreed with RWC's assertion that England would make more money than the other contenders for 2015. They also tried to exploit the advantage Wales would have over all the other competing nations in six years in playing matches at home by raising the issue before the vote. Even if the RFU succeeds in arguing that it has compelling reasons for staging matches in Cardiff, Wales may find themselves playing in England.
"As things stand, the 2015 World Cup will be staged solely in England," said the chief executive of the International Rugby Board and an RWC director, Mike Miller.
"The Millennium Stadium is not part of the bid as yet. There is a feeling that a World Cup should be held in one nation, as it was in Australia in 2003."
The RFU was too euphoric at securing the World Cup to worry about details. "We will have to deal with the issue regarding Wales," said the Union's management board chairman, Martyn Thomas. "There are very good reasons why Cardiff should be included, not least because it is closer to south-west England than London and rugby is popular on the English side of much of its border."
Even though it had won the RWC recommendation last month, the RFU knew it would have to fight for every vote. Thomas arrived in Dublin last Sunday because he knew South Africa were in town then and he was up at dawn on voting day to have breakfast with the chief executive of the Scottish Rugby Union, Gordon McKie.
"We had a number of productive meetings, but we did not offer anything material to anyone," said Thomas. Scotland said they were going to support us and having the World Cup in England will benefit rugby throughout the United Kingdom. What England were able to hold out to Scotland, and Ireland, was the prospect of staging their group matches at locations convenient for their supporters, Newcastle and Sunderland for the Scots, Liverpool and Manchester for the Irish."
The council vote was taken by secret ballot after a two-hour discussion on RWC's behest at the Royal College of Physicians. When it was taken, delegates, not knowing the result, went to a nearby hotel where the media were in residence and the result was revealed by the IRB chairman, Bernard Lapasset. Had it gone against England and Japan, the council meeting would have reconvened with votes then taken on all the bids for 2015 and 2019.
It appeared that England, and Japan, gained the support of the other three home unions, Australia, Canada, Oceania, North America, Asia and South America, with New Zealand, France, Europe, Argentina and Africa siding with South Africa and Italy.
"You never know when it comes to this sort of thing," said Thomas. "There's a great saying in rugby: you can trust everyone with your wife but never with their vote. What matters is that we will stage the World Cup and we will deliver on what we have promised."
The chief executive of the RFU, Francis Baron, said the next decade promised to be one of the biggest for sport in Britain. "We have the Olympics, the rugby league and rugby union world cups and, we hope, the football World Cup in 2018 to look forward to. We are working closely with the football authorities and have made Twickenham available to them. We have promised to host the most successful rugby World Cup ever and we will."
South Africa were the losers. While the hosts of the first two World Cups, New Zealand and England, are hosting the next two, South Africa's turn has gone to Japan in 2019. "It will be at least 28 years between World Cups for us and that is far too long for a rugby-mad nation," said the former Springboks captain, Mornie du Plessis. Get used to it was Lapasset's message. "The tournament reflects our global vision," he said. "It is not just about the big countries any more."
(Source: Guardian.co.uk)
