With European qualifying starting last Saturday as the mighty Magyars
from Hungary took on the belligerent Bulgarians and the 3 year countdown having
just passed what better time for a look at the issues surrounding the 2015
Rugby World Cup in England?
This series will look into 5 areas:
The Stadiums, which ones are long-listed, are they suitable and which
will be chosen?
The Schedule, how will the World Cup in England actually work?
The Season, can a proper domestic season really be fitted around the demands
of the World Cup?
The Stats, how are we measuring up to that other World Cup?
The Sides, who are we going to be watching in 2015 and how are they
getting here?
The Season
31 weeks. From the
World Cup final, on the 31st of November, to England’s tour in Australia,
starting June 12th, is only 31 weeks. 31
weeks to fit in 24 Premiership games, 9 European games, 6 LV Cup games and the
6 Nations too. Maths buffs will notice
that those numbers add up to 39. So
something’s got to give. Quite a lot has
to give frankly.
The first compromise that must be reached is pushing the
Australian tour back one week by making it a 2 test tour rather than a 3 test
tour. It is a bit of a joke that England
goes on tour the summer after a World Cup anyway and even more of a joke that
they play the same side 3 weeks in a row.
This gives a week more breathing space without starting to eat into the
next season. The other compromise must
be that reached is Premiership rugby playing right through the 6 Nations. There is no option not to.
The IRB require all professional domestic rugby to stop
during the World Cup and PRL have already agreed a compensation package with
the RFU/England 2015. This is a sensible
compromise from the RFU as the clubs will be facing major disruption even if
they are in line to benefit from a successful tournament, and is an example of
the current good relations between the bodies.
Clubs like Wasps, Irish, Sale and, if they are still with us, Welsh are
in a far more perilous situation than the other clubs as they have no means of
generating revenue during those fallow weeks.
A few conferences are hardly going to replace 3 full Franklin’s Gardens
but it does keep some cash flow going.
Frankly I don’t think PRL would want to play during the World Cup group
stages anyway; you are flogging an inferior product than normal and going up
against 10 games a week which are going to sell an average of 55,000 tickets.
The knock out stages are another question, I think that to
make the fixture list work the first two weeks of the LV Cup group stages must
be played before the World Cup and the last two rounds on the quarter final
weekend and the semi final weekend. There
will only be 4 matches on the first weekend and 2 on the second, so the LV Cup
fitting around the other matches seems a sensible compromise. The semis and the final would, as now, be
played during the 6 Nations.
How the European competition will look is the biggest
unknown, it looks likely that some form of restructured competition will emerge
from the wreckage of ERC and that competition will still be a 9 round
tournament. The group stages will either
be played as 3 blocks of 2 games with the quarter final after the 6 Nations, as
currently, or more likely the French will get their way and the calendar will
shift so that there is 2 blocks of 3 games, all before Christmas, and the
quarter final will be in January, with the semis and final in April.
Either way the Premiership will have to have 4 rounds of
games mid week. If they decide to start
the season on the Sunday after the World Cup final that goes down to 3. If they play the whole LV Cup during the
World Cup period it goes down to 2.
Given the recent record of English clubs in Europe it is
possible they would organise a round of fixtures on the weekend of a European
Cup final. Worst case scenario (or best
case really) 2 games would go ahead and that would require all 4 teams involved
in the European finals being in different games. More realistically only a couple of games
would have to be moved. This is hardly
ideal, as you would be making life very hard for a successful side but these
are extra ordinary times and bad weather has forced Championship clubs to deal
with much tougher fixture lists. In the
first European season Tigers had to play league games mid week after
progressing to the final, it would hardly be new. Otherwise we will have some clubs forced into
playing mid week rugby whilst having a weekend blank on the fixture list.
These varying numbers of mid week games could occur at any
time, if Europe is played in 2 blocks of 3 games all in November and December
then the Premiership would have only played 2 games by Christmas; some early
mid week games might be played to give the table some shape. Or Premiership Rugby might look at playing
games around Bank Holiday weekends (Easter is 27th of March, other
Bank Holidays are 2nd and 30th of May), with a Good Friday and an
Easter Monday round of fixtures for instance.
This has a long history in both Football and League.
These various permutations make a block of European fixtures
more attractive as they also leave us with a block of domestic fixtures, it is
easier to mould a schedule to allow 3 games in 10 days if you have 4 weeks to
play with rather than 2 weeks here and 2 weeks there of different competitions.
Premiership Rugby chiefs will be praying for a mild winter,
and preparing for a freezing one, as no permutation of the schedule has any
slack for cancelled fixtures. This
sounds harsh and a recipe for trouble but really is only forcing investment in
facilities that would be useful for years to come. Tents and anti-frost systems are hardly new
or onerously expensive, just pricey enough for there always to be something
more important to spend the money on; this is the perfect excuse to invest.
So what do we know for sure?
That the World Cup final is on October 31st and
the Premiership final will almost certainly be on June 5th, 31 weeks
later. 31 weeks to fit in a whole
season. 31 weeks to fit in 39 games.
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