O’Driscoll: Not getting a sniff of round two a bitter pill to swallow

IRELAND 2023 bid ambassador Brian O’Driscoll has admitted that the return of eight out of a possible 39 votes was a bitter pill for Ireland to swallow after all of the effort that went into trying to secure the competition.

The former international captain was asked aboard the bid to lend some star-dust, but the Irish message failed to resonate with the World Rugby Council delegates who eliminated the bid in the first round of votes, behind South Africa on 13 and France on 18.

So, Ireland was out of the equation as the big beasts battled it out and the French were handed the tournament.

“For me, the most disappointing part is eight votes. To be not even within a sniff of getting into the second round, to me, that’s the bitterest pill to swallow,” O’Driscoll (right) said.

“We are still at guessing games as to who voted for us. We have been let down. There were people who said that they would and that’s disappointing because I know the body of work that has gone into this and that’s incredibly thorough.

“On the upside we couldn’t change anything, we can’t magic the stadia into completion and that’s been the crux of the issue for us when it came to this evaluation report but we are going to see a lot more written about that over the next couple of weeks.”

Like his fellow members of the Irish bid team, O’Driscoll lamented the lack of support from Wales and Scotland whose three votes each would have put Ireland in the hunt with 14 votes.

And yet, he acknowledged, there was more missing than just Celtic support.

“You would have hoped to have the support of the Celtic nations,” he conceded.

“We get the sense England supported us which we appreciate.

“But it is not just them. We would have needed a lot of help from elsewhere.

“But to be a good bit away from

13/14 which would have gotten us into the mix for the second round I think, for me, is the greatest disappointment.”

It’s another bitter memory, but O’Driscoll captained Ireland in the last French World Cup just 10 years ago.

And he feels that the moves made by World Rugby and their technical evaluation mean the tournament will be on the same merry-go-round of big nations ad infinitum.

“They are going to have to look at that evaluation report and the criteria around it because you are never going to see a rugby tournament hosted outside the big four or five teams,” he said.

“You know countries like Argentina, maybe are a while away from it yet, Italy are going to come into it, America in time.

“Ireland will get a World Cup, it is just a matter of Ireland showing again what they are capable of. Who knows, we might have our stadia more developed down the track.

“To only be 16 years apart is a very short period of time (for France).

“What that does, it looks to other countries such as Australia and England who have hosted relatively recently and will look to have another bite at it fairly quickly because if it was awarded to France after a fairly short period why would it be awarded to anyone else? ”