This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the future of the World Cup, the Barnes League and the general imbalance of resources…
How can it be a World Cup, when most of the World can’t host it
It’s difficult to place rugby as a truly global sport, despite the far spread of all the finest protagonists across hemispheres and time zones. When you have a World Cup every four years which realistically only three or four countries have a chance of winning but which costs all the competitors a fortune to take part, it’s difficult to conceive how that situation can quickly change.
Rugby has flagship countries as competitors who ought to be able to put up fine World Cups on a regular basis, but when the winners of the last five editions, the two most rugby-mad nations on the planet, are economically unable to foresee hosting another, you have to wonder if the entire process is not a little bit flawed.
The tournament appears to have outgrown its own territories. Even the home nations only now look prepared to consider a joint bid – and that’s before the squabbles arise over whose stadium is the brightest and shiniest for the final. In South Africa, whose bid for the 2023 edition was confounded by some decidedly subterfugal politics, there is no more preparedness.
SA Rugby President Mark Alexander this week said that the financial and infrastructural burden of attempting to host a tournament would be too great on the country.
His New Zealand counterpart Mark Robinson said similar a couple of years ago, and with the tournament expanding to 24 teams, New Zealand is simply not big enough to cope. The same probably goes for Ireland, who also saw their 2023 bid derailed by politics.
But as we gear up for the bidding process to start for 2035 and 2039, the question of where it can still go needs to be asked. There’s an enjoyable-looking prospect in Europe on offer in both Italy and Spain. But none of the nations in the Rugby Championship look equipped to host after Australia in 2027, nor, with the exception of France, do any of the other Six Nations countries look equipped either.
A return to Japan is a popular choice, while the Middle East continues to dangle thick wodges of cash in front of anybody who wants it. But after that? Joint bids only?
The current situation, where it cost France €13m to host it and cost other countries losses of larger sums just to take part, isn’t feasible. World Rugby generates stacks of revenue – the most recent flash figure was €500m – and is making a much more decent fist of reinvesting it into the game globally than it was a score of years ago, yet that reinvestment is not finding its way back into the game in the countries who generate most of the tournament’s value.
Many are openly questioning the wisdom of participation when the return on the investment is not tangible.
And that’s just participation. But we’re approaching a stage where only a tiny number of countries will even be able to host a World Cup, never mind have the will to. Along with the Nations Cup, which sits awkwardly in competition with the global showpiece, the World Cup looks increasingly like something everybody will try and win, but which very few will actually try and have.
The Barnes League suggestion is a good one, but what happens in England and where is the value?
This column suggested a fortnight ago that the current problems faced by Wales could be solved by the creation of an Anglo-Welsh league. But those suggestions were not as far-reaching as those suggested by Stuart Barnes this week.
As Mr. Barnes freely admitted, his conceptualised league was done so far more in hope than expectation, also laced with a liberal dose of heady nostalgia. Ahhh, Cardiff v Bath! Llanelli v Leicester! Pontypridd v Was-… oh.
The idea was to reduce the number of English teams to seven from the current ten and replacing the unfortunate triplet with three Welsh regions.
Assuming the struggling Newcastle were to be one on the basis of their ongoing situation, so be it. But it’s difficult to understand where the other two could come from, not least with Cardiff Blues sounding all big name and with plenty of history behind and such, but only actually being worth less than a million pounds, as we discovered this week.
Compare the to the 20 large which the late Eddie Jordan and company stumped up for the London Irish brand – lest we forget, the Exiles are not even in the current premiership ten – and you get an idea of how unlikely it is that anybody close to the English game would countenance dropping any of the other nine to welcome in the Welsh.
This is the biggest problem with succumbing to nostalgia when it comes to Wales: the past is well and truly gone. If Cardiff is no longer viable financially, then goodness knows what the other two regions are worth, but it is unlikely to be anything like the Premiership counterparts.
The creation of an Anglo-Welsh league with the existing teams could work, although you’d still end up cramming it into the season – which, along with everybody’s dwindling resources, is probably why the suggestion was to reduce it to ten. But to do it on the basis of nostalgia would only remind us all of how far away from the past we’ve travelled.
When the lure of the black jersey is gone, how much of the game is left?
Mark Tele’a’s departure from New Zealand, two years out from a World Cup at which he surely would have been a part has rightly set alarm bells ringing throughout both islands.
But the reality is that financial resources away from smaller nations are becoming so concentrated in both Japan and France that the emotional reasons for representing your country, or belonging to, or contributing to, national traditions and heritage are no longer enough to make players want to see out the primes of their careers at home.
How that can be changed is hard to say; there’s an economic reality that is impossible to ignore. But the game is not served when its best players are not considered for national selection because of the club or franchise they choose to represent. Nor are domestic games served when the best players flock to only one or two competitions. Something has to give somewhere.
Src: Planetrugby.com - https://www.planetrugby.com/news/loose-pass-flawed-rugby-world-cup-outgrows-its-territories-while-economic-reality-hits-all-blacks
