World Cup bid needs a dose of cute Irish hoorism to win
THE Irish love dressing themselves up for a hooley and this is the perfect time of year for it.
The sight of the ‘gas craic’ brigade parading around our pubs and clubs in various states of fancy dress, and undress, is one t hat l asts f or days around Halloween.
You feel for harrassed bar staff wearing fixed smiles and gritting their teeth as the latest drunken zombie fumbles around for his wallet to pay for a round of Jagerbombs.
It goes too far in this country, as proven when a large financial institution received a flood of complaints last year after encouraging all their staff to dress up for Halloween.
Customers were, quite rightly, incensed by visual evidence their financial affairs were not being taken seriously — if you are being told your loan application has been rejected or that your house is being repossessed, you’d rather not hear it from a bloke in a chicken suit.
Unfortunately, Ireland’s World Cup 2023 bid was dressed up to chicken-suit cringe levels and you can only imagine the conversation among the i ndependent review committee before their recommendation last Tuesday.
The solemn vows that staging the World Cup would help bring the north and south of Ireland together? Irrelevant.
The confident prediction that hosting the tournament would open up North America to the wonders of rugby, through the Irish diaspora? Wishy-washy claptrap — as high on aspiration as it was low on specifics.
The horror-video with Bob Geldof reading poetry, affected enthusiasm of Bono and sonorous tones of Liam Neeson didn’t cut it either.
Nor did the partnership with the GAA, which was not only complicated for outsiders to get their heads around but also hinged on stadiums which do not measure up — even to the degree of not having Wi-Fi in s o me e mbarrassing cases.
Comparisons have been drawn with some of New Zealand’s rough and ready grounds in 2011 but the only relevant comparisons for this report were with the hi-tech stadiums of South Africa and France carrying a proven recent record of staging major sporting tournaments. Incidentally, the GAA were quick to duck for cover when Ireland’s bid went pear-shaped on Tuesday — GAA director Páraic Duffy claiming ‘it’s a matter for the IRFU to make a comment’, which translates as ‘nothing to do with us, boss’.
And then there was the money factor — the bottom line. Ireland were offering the minimum fee of £120million, France were offering £150m and South Africa £160m — how could there be any real surprise when the South Africans won the recommendation?
This is not hindsight wisdom (and there has been plenty of that around this week from bitter media outlets mortified by their ‘Here we go!’ tee-up jingoism last Tuesday morning) because you could see this coming.
On October 7 last year, Oval Office stated: ‘We should probably prepare for rejection, Ireland’s
Time to start whispering in ears
pitch of, “We don’t have enough rugby venues ourselves but the GAA will let us use theirs... it’ll be grand” might be a bit of a hard sell’ and a few weeks ago, on September 22, that France and South Africa’s willingness to pay above the odds was ‘a pretty compelling argument’. Like people showing off holiday snaps and pet pics, Ireland fell into the old trap of mistakenly believing other people care as much about us being a ‘great aul nation’ as we do. You could see it in the hubris of IRFU 2023 World Cup bid director Kevin Potts last weekend. ‘I won’t be surprised because we deserve to win this. I’ll smile with great satisfaction and then I’ll probably go to the pub,’ he said. (All that was missing was a ‘Gwan ya boy ya!’.) So much for the negative. What is certain is that Ireland would be excellent hosts of this tournament and — given our obsession with showing visitors how wonderful we are — the craic element would
form a big part of it.
But it was woefully naive to think giant extra wedges of cash and ready-to-go stadia would be sacrificed on the altar of Ireland’s céad mile fáilte. Now it’s time to get real. The final vote on November 15 is a secret ballot and not bound by Tu e s d a y ’ s South Africa recommendation.
This is the time to start whispering in ears and broker scratchback deals to the voting unions.
In 2005, Ireland i nfamously threw their 11th-hour support behind New Zealand for the 2011 World Cup and then played the All Blacks — the biggest draw in world rugby — 10 times in the next eight years, as well as securing a memorable fixture against Munster in 2008.
Of course, that is not to claim the two eventualities are related but those are the facts.
We are in the realms of smokefilled backrooms now, a world of ‘what can we do to get your support?’ which, even if it cannot save the 2023 campaign, can lay the foundations for hosting the 2027 tournament.
This is about political manoeuvring and, while having a figure as respected as former Tánaiste Dick Spring on board adds gravitas, you wish we had some of the lads who worked the Galway tent during the hey- day of the Celtic Tiger.
We are not ready to stick a fork in Ireland’s bid and call it ‘done’ just yet but it’s hovering next to the pre-heated oven. That chicken suit needs to be ditched quickly.