SLOPPY
Fury as Spring brands 2023 Rugby World Cup report:
FORMER Tánaiste Dick Spring has described this week’s report which recommends that South Africa host the 2023 Rugby World Cup as ‘sloppy’ and he complained Ireland’s bid for the tournament didn’t get enough credit.
The independent report, commissioned by World Rugby, favoured South Africa above France and Ireland.
He said: ‘A big grievance of ours is that we’re marked down because we haven’t hosted a World Cup before, which strikes me as verging on daft.’
The ex-international added: ‘We were offering a different type of tournament, a very people-friendly tournament, one where people would enjoy the rugby and the spirit of Ireland. If they had said to us you need ten major soccer stadia, a-la France or South Africa, we wouldn’t have bid for it.
‘We did primarily on the basis that New Zealand was able to run a World Cup [in 2011] and we have far superior facilities to New Zealand, and the other sad part of this is that even New Zealand can’t bid for a World Rugby Cup again on the basis of this report.’ Mr Spring, chairman of Ireland’s RWC 2023 Bid Oversight Board, also questioned why Ireland received equal marks with South Africa on ‘security’ and also took issue with how the African nation wasn’t marked down for being stripped of the Commonwealth Games earlier this year.
It emerged this week that South Africa offered €180m to World Rugby to host the 2023 World Cup, despite Durban being stripped of the rights to host the 2022 Commonwealth Games in March, due to financial problems. Birmingham is expected to take over as the host city for the multi-sport event.
Mr Spring said: ‘We seem not to gain marks for the positives, but others do not lose marks for the negatives. Quite frankly, I thought that should be a starting point to get into the background of the circumstances why a reputable organisation like the Commonwealth Games removed the games from a country that had been given them.’
Bids to host the tournament had to include a fee to World Rugby, with a minimum set at €135m. Ireland offered the minimum, while France offered €169m and South Africa €180m.
In the report, concerns over the stripping of the Commonwealth Games from Durban were dismissed as ‘not relevant to RWC 2023 hosting’.
Pierce O’Callaghan, a former Irish race walker who has worked on a string of high-profile sporting events, echoed Mr Spring’s concerns about South Africa’s financing. He said: ‘I assumed that [the collapsed games] would kill their chances in rugby.’
Officials who wrote the report also gave the same rating to security plans for both Ireland and South Africa, despite the murder rate in South Africa being more than 30 times the rate in Ireland. An embarrassing error in the report labelled Croke Park as primarily a rugby venue despite the stadium not having hosted an international rugby game since 2010 with Mr Spring saying the mistake ‘highlights the sloppy nature of the report’. Meanwhile, an IRFU spokesman said reports that Ireland had sent a formal complaint to World Rugby about the report were untrue.
‘We have made no formal contact to WR but IRFU reps have been in contact with WR council members with a number of issues we have with the-evaluation report including security, ensuring full stadia and hosting requirements,’ he said.