GAA’s generosity to rugby likely to remain a gesture
Eight years ago, the earth seemed to cease spinning on its axis when the association’s Annual Congress agreed to unlock the doors of Croke Park to ‘foreign sports’ and yet the decision to extend that welcome across its network of grounds nationwide for a possible Rugby World Cup bid raised hardly a murmur in Derry last week.
True, a little over 7% of delegates found the motion distasteful and said as much by voting nay, but the general perception has been that of one small step for the GAA and one giant leap for the chances of the world’s third largest sporting competition being brought to these very shores.
Hold that thought.
It is only human nature to magnify the importance of events on our own doorstep while diminishing those further afield. It happens in sports all the time. Go to any pre-match press conference and some will pass without a single question being asked about the opposition and, to be honest, we are all somewhat guilty of underestimating the size of the other scrappers in this particular fight.
Ireland aside, we have had Russia, the USA and Argentina all expressing varied levels of interest in playing host to the global rugby fraternity in 10 years’ time and even a cursory examination of such prospective bids is more than enough to grasp the fact that lil ol’ Ireland faces a task of monumental proportions if Semple Stadium or MacHale Park are to cater for the All Blacks and Springboks.
Let’s take the US first.
Forget the fact the States is still the world’s largest commercial market, or that it has the 10th most rugby players, or that it has enough stadiums and cities to host 10 Rugby World Cups simultaneously. The really interesting fact is that the IRB approached the Americans — not the other way around — about the possibility of Uncle Sam making a bid for 2023 two years ago and that demonstrates a clear and understandable line of thinking from a sport which is looking to capitalise on its return to the Olympic Games in 2016.
Mike Miller, the IRB’s former chief executive, told this newspaper prior to the last RWC in New Zealand that the game was indeed looking to expand its frontiers but that it hadn’t quite yet reached a stage where it could do a Fifa and award the jewel in its promotional and economic crowns to an emerging sporting destination such as Qatar. His successor, Brett Gosper, struck a similarly cautionary tone when asked about the chances of Russia ever getting the nod.
That said, the Russians have already signalled their intent to make a play for the 2023 event. Their plans to convert existing football stadia for the bid echoes the means by which England will do their business in two years’ time and it is an approach which has found public favour with Kit McConnell, the head of the IRB’s World Cup operations unit.
“With the venues you will have from the 2018 football World Cup and rugby being able to be played in football venues, as we’ve seen in France in 2007 and as we will see in England in 2015, I think we’ve got a wonderful platform in the future to host a Rugby World Cup,” said McConnell on a trip to the country in 2011.
And then there is Argentina, a wonderful rugby nation which has long harboured a chip on its shoulder for being left out in the cold — one that has only now started to erode with its belated accession to the old Tri Nations alongside the heavyweights of New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
Like the USA and Russia, the South Americans boast far more stadiums than Ireland — even if some of them would need as much work as their Gaelic counterparts in the event of being given the gig — and they have already made a major play about their ability to host the tournament on their own, which is something the IRB have grown more keen on and not necessarily a promise Ireland will be able to make, even with last week’s leg up from the GAA.
If Ireland does hold an advantage it is in the fact that it is in the same time zone as the game’s largest market, the UK, and games played would be suitable for live viewing and the generation of advertising dollars in our neighbours’ considerable market and that of France, which is rugby’s second biggest economic powerhouse. In every other way, however, it is harder to make a case in favour. So, a worthy gesture in Derry then but one suspects it may prove to be just that. A gesture.
Email: brendan.obrien@examiner.ie
Twitter: @Rackob
