Strange new worlds: can the Rugby World Cup live long and prosper?
Nothing ever stands still in international sport. In just over 13 weeks the next Six Nations championship will be kicking off and the global rugby circus is already moving on. The 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia might seem a far distant prospect in every sense but it will come charging over the hill quicker than expected.
So even as Paris’s hoteliers and bar owners count their profits (if anyone in Guardian accounts is reading this, we’ve kept all our mineral water receipts), now is the time for thinking and planning ahead. And, as ever, wondering how the World Cup experience might be improved in future, rather than simply cutting and pasting from previous brochures.
To some extent this is already happening. Rugby Australia is well aware it has been handed a juicy opportunity and is desperate to cash in on its golden ticket, which also features a British & Irish Lions tour in 2025 and a women’s World Cup in 2029. We already know the tournament will involve 24 teams instead of 20 and be based on a city “hub” model to reduce some of the logistical difficulties which arose in France.
It should be quite a show and there is, of course, a precedent. The 2003 tournament was well run and featured plenty of dramatic rugby. This time around, with the pool draw also to be conducted closer to the event, the portents are also pretty decent, assuming the Wallabies manage to unearth a competitive team between now and then.
What the event will not do, though, is break new ground. Rugby union generally prefers the tried and tested and is suspicious of the road less travelled. The usual first step is to ask if a new idea will be sufficiently lucrative. And then, if the answer is potentially ‘yes’, how much will my cut be?
As underlined by the recently announced Nations Cup format, which effectively protects the leading 12 nations for the next decade, this approach does little to spread the gospel more widely. There have been 10 World Cups to date and only one, Japan in 2019, has not been hosted by an established rugby powerhouse.
It was hailed as a big step forward, therefore, when World Rugby awarded the men’s 2031 tournament and the subsequent women’s equivalent in 2033 to the US. America is not a rugby hotbed as yet but crack the code and, in the view of the former Eagles captain Dan Lyle, a World Cup there clearly has potential. “We don’t even need people to travel because there are so many expats in America. And you’ll be talking 50,000 at each game. Everyone wants to be part of something that’s unique and authentic.”
There is, however, a sizeable elephant in the room, wrapped in a starspangled banner. Everyone likes the sparkly vision of an American World Cup but the foundations need to be solid. At present that is not the case. The USA Eagles failed to qualify for France and the national team have yet to win the hearts and minds of an expectant nation. That, in turn, makes it harder to woo the corporate big beasts with sufficient financial muscle to drive the project. As does the current global economic slowdown.
There is increased muttering, consequently, on both sides of the pond. Can it actually be done? What if the US is still struggling to get its act together, on and off the field, in four years’ time? The global game depends on successful World Cups to fund almost everything else. It cannot afford any turkeys, least of all a highprofile American one.
But is there another option that doesn’t involve either a humiliating retreat or a return to, say, stadium-rich England? Perhaps there is. Spain, Italy and Portugal, it is said, are already mulling over a joint Euro-zone bid to host the 2035 men’s Rugby World Cup. You only have to write down a 10-city list of possible match venues – Barcelona,
Madrid, Seville, San Sebastián, Lisbon, Porto, Rome, Milan, Genoa and, maybe, Naples – to spark up the imagination. A final played in front of 100,000 fans at the Camp Nou, tens of thousands of travelling supporters, all in a primetime European television slot? Olé!
If it ever came to pass, rugby would instantly be seen in a more evangelical light. Boldly going where it hasn’t been before etc. It might even prod one or two of rugby’s other great institutions into action. Why, for example, do the British & Irish Lions only play Test series in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa on an unchanging loop? Could they not, at some point, tour the Americas?
There is instant fun to be had in doodling a possible itinerary. Games against Canada and a Major League Rugby All-Star XV in Vancouver and
Chicago, followed by a Test against the US Eagles in New York? Before heading to South America to face Brazil (currently 26th in the world rankings) Chile and Uruguay, topped off with three Tests against Argentina? The anthem badge-clutching alone would be worth the trip.
It will not be everyone’s cup of mate. Agustín Pichot, for example, is among those not wholly convinced it would be a revolutionary masterstroke. “I wish the Lions would come to South America. But if they only come once every 16 years what will that change?” As so often, he makes a good point. But if rugby simply ploughs the same old furrows, how is it ever going to grow?
This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.