Revealed: How France won the RWC hosting rights
The story of how the Fifa World Cup ended up in Qatar has been well told in all its corrupt and morally bereft detail.
The story of how the Rugby World Cup ended up in France next year has been told but not in any detail.
Eyebrows were raised in November 2017 at the glitzy event to unveil the host nation for 2023, when World Rugby chairman
Sir Bill Beaumont revealed France as the winners.
The big surprise was the vote was supposed to be a formality — each member union endorsing the recommendation of World Rugby that they vote for South Africa, who had scored best in an independent evaluation.
Ireland, France and South Africa had all been in the running. But when a 139-page report of all three bids was published a few weeks before the vote, it named South Africa’s bid as the best, and it became World Rugby’s recommended host.
It was the first time the process had been run like this — with an independent group brought in to evaluate the bids and the governing body making a recommendation on the back of that.
The rationale for doing this was to deter the horse-trading that had marred previous processes.
Rugby didn’t have the corruption of football but the awarding of World Cup hosting rights was still a bit murky and political.
The 2007 tournament had been tainted by the deals France had struck with Scotland and Wales to win the vote — with the hosts agreeing that games could be played in Edinburgh and Cardiff.
World Rugby wanted to clean things up — make the process of bidding for World Cups transparent.
The shenanigans of how football was going about voting for its World Cup hosts further encouraged World Rugby to tighten up and leave no room for accusations or doubt.
But in the gap between the report being published and the vote taking place, old habits proved hard to kick.
The French, led by chief executive Bernard Laporte rubbished the findings of the report, calling it “nonsense” and lobbied their fellow members.
Ireland did much the same — hoped a late charm offensive would swing a few votes their way, while South Africa, trusting in the recommendation they had received, sat back and expected to win.
Their chief executive Jurie Roux, even said he felt Ireland and France should withdraw their bids ahead of the vote, and while some accused him of arrogance, he kind of had a point.
The outcome was France somehow managed to persuade enough of their fellow members to go against the recommendation.
In the first round of voting, France won 18 votes, two short of the 20-majority required, with South Africa receiving 13 and Ireland eight.
In round two, France reached 24 votes to secure victory, with South Africa on 15, and it really would be interesting to know precisely why so many delegates were happy to ridicule World Rugby and go with France.
As Roux said after the shock defeat: “World Rugby ran exhaustive, transparent process for 15 months to identify best host nation, only for the process to go entirely opaque for the past two weeks.”
It’s reasonable to ask how these votes were swayed.
There are Fifa executives serving jail time for their role in securing the 2018 World Cup for Russia and the one for Qatar. Rugby needs to be clear about its own processes — it’s not enough to shrug and say France put together a more compelling bid.
And especially now that the chief executive of Rugby World Cup 2023, Claude Atcher, had to be fired from his role recently after the findings of a Labour Inspectorate investigation.
The report by the ethics committee accused the 66-year-old of “alarming managerial practices altering the functioning of the structure and the suffering of a certain number of employees”.
The Fifa World Cup is probably never going to get away from the question of why it is in Qatar and a rotten process led to a rotten outcome that will hurt the sport for years.
Rugby can’t be in France next year with the same confusion among fans and players as to why they are not in South Africa.
In the gap between the report being published and the vote taking place, old habits proved hard to kick.