WITH bidding and lobbying for the World Cups in 2015 and 2019 underway various, mostly English, journalists have again been declaring that it is much better when the tournament is staged in one country, and indeed asserting that there should be no more "split" World Cups.
"Asserting" is the right word, for all we get is assertions, no coherent argument. The fact is that only two of the five tournaments to date have been single-country ones – 1995 in South Africa, and 2003 in Australia. Both were successful – nobody de
nies that – but is there any evidence that they were more successful than the "split" tournaments in 1991 and 2007? If there is, I haven't heard it.
Admittedly, we in Scotland haven't made a great success of our share in the tournament in 1991 and 2007. In both years some matches were played before miserably poor crowds. But, though France were the hosts last time, the tournament scarcely suffered from having a few games played in Scotland and Wales. Indeed what was perhaps the most dramatic game of all, the quarter-final between France and New Zealand, was staged in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.
In any case, making comparisons between the tournaments held in South Africa and Australia and those staged in Europe is not comparing like with like. Australia may be a single country, but the distance between Brisbane and Sydney – to say nothing of that between Perth and Sydney – is far greater than that between Paris and Edinburgh or Paris and Cardiff. Moreover, in political if not rugby terms, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, though not of course the Republic of Ireland, are all parts of a single state called the United Kingdom. To pretend that a tournament split between the various parts of the UK is somehow less coherent than one split between Queensland. New South Wales and Western Australia is bizarre.
Actually even some English journalists who call, fairly enough, for England to be the sole host, concede that, given the timing of the Cup, with football grounds likely to be unavailable, the Millennium Stadium might have to be hired to supplement Twickenham and Wembley in the later stages of the tournament. Why not Murrayfield also for a quarter-final, even if all pool games are in England? There are lots of rugby supporters in the north of England for whom Murrayfield is at least as accessible as Twickenham.
The real threat to the future of the RWC comes – surprise , surprise – from the International Rugby Board itself. They are demanding that they receive a guaranteed £80 million from the 2015 tournament and £120m from its successor. Given that the IRB already grabs all the revenues from sponsorship, corporate hospitality and television, leaving the hosts only with gate money, this is preposterous. Delegates from the bidding countries should tell them roundly that greed was last year's fashion.
It's true that the IRB uses this money to promote the game in countries where there is no professional rugby, and the Board's new chairman, the respected Bernard Lapasset, has been critical of what he sees as the "money obsession" of the professional game and the selfishness of the big countries. Fair enough, but the professional game is the goose that lays the RWC golden eggs, and demands such as the IRB is now making are likely to kill the goose.
Elsewhere another English journalist, Peter Bills of the Independent, wrote this week that the IRB is now set to approve all the experimental law variations (ELVs) in the spring, with England and South Africa coming into line in favour and Wales swithering. I trust someone has been pulling his leg. Or perhaps some Australians have been feeding him with "disinformation". Considering that the most objectionable of the ELVs – that which downgrades most penalty offences to free kicks, and which makes, on the evidence of last year's Super 14, for an unstructured, dismally repetitive game – has not even been given a trial in the Northern Hemisphere, except for a brief one at club level here in Scotland two years ago, any decision to adopt the ELVs in total would be grotesque.
One trusts the northern countries will stand firm against them. Rugby is healthy and becoming healthier here, especially in England and France. But crowds are growing even in Scotland, and it is only in Australia that the popularity of the game is threatened by rival codes.
A north-south split would be sad, but the fact is that with the Six Nations, the Heineken Cup, the French Top 14, the Guinness Premiership and the Magners League, we could get along without them – until they came to realise how much they were losing. Better to keep rugby as we know it, even at the expense of losing the World Cup and doing without the autumn internationals. The last mentioned would be a loss that only the various Unions' treasurers would weep copious tears over.
