The prospect of another ‘group of death’ at the next Rugby World Cup could be on the cards after organisers refused to confirm when the draw for the 2019 tournament in Japan would be made – and conceded it might take place years in advance because of the difficulty of selling tickets up against the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Last week the Wales head coach, Warren Gatland, condemned the “ridiculous” decision to draw the 2015 World Cup pools almost three years ago which, because his team had briefly slipped out of the top eight of the world rankings, left Wales fighting it out in Group A with Australia, England and Fiji. At a press briefing on Monday Rugby World Cup administrators were asked three times whether the draw for Japan would take place nearer the tournament and three times they refused to commit to doing so, even though they conceded it would be better for the competition.
As Alan Gilpin, head of the Rugby World Cup, admitted: “The challenge in Japan is there is an Olympic Games in 2020 and we are in a market where we have a less latent rugby audience who would naturally buy tickets for the Rugby World Cup. So we are looking at when is the best time to have certainty in those fixtures so they can sell tickets. We would all like it to be much closer to the tournament from a competition point of view but there are some realities of taking Rugby World Cup to a new market which means that we have got to be sensible.”
World Rugby’s chief executive, Brett Gosper, said no decision had been taken on when to conduct the draw for Japan but also warned “we don’t want to go in the market in phasing terms when we are up against the Olympics in a ticketing sense”.
But despite the loss of England from this World Cup, organisers have hailed the tournament as the “greatest to date” with 2.41m tickets sold and 750,000 people attending fan zones. They also insisted that the early exit by Stuart Lancaster’s side would not affect the competition.
“The Rugby World Cup is a juggernaut with huge momentum,” said Gosper. “I would say England’s exit has very little effect on the global nature of the tournament. My sense is there is a mature and philosophical sporting market here. The spirit of the England fans means they will move on from the defeat of their team.
“And in terms of being a shop window for the sport, we couldn’t be happier with where we are now. At so many levels it is tracking to be the greatest Rugby World Cup to date.”
Rugby organisers have also pointed to the narrowing of the gap between established order and emerging nations as further evidence of the tournament’s success. In the pool phases the average points difference between tier one and tier two teams was 30, compared with 36 in 2011.
And despite Wales losing much of their back line through injuries and Ireland also losing several players against France on Sunday, they have claimed there is no evidence that the game is getting more physical or dangerous. “We’ll do a full injury surveillance after the tournament but we are not seeing higher levels of injuries than in previous tournaments,” Gilpin said. “And when we looked at concussion, which has been a huge priority for us,we are seeing it track less than the average of test match rugby during the tournament so we think we are making some progress.”
The managing director of England Rugby, Stephen Brown, says his focus for the next three weeks is on the World Cup and not the review into Lancaster and the team’s performance.
“My brief from the union is to deliver the rest of the World Cup in the way we did for the first three weeks,” Brown said. “That’s my focus. The only comment I’ll give you on it is that the union is in a significantly better position than it was in 2011. We’ve spent the last four years making it that way and that includes the England team.”
