Rugby Country only stretches so far and bosses will in time come calling to Ireland

At some point Ireland will be as good as it gets for rugby, says Kieran Shannon

Ah, lads, who do ye think ye are?! The irony was probably lost on them but in making Ireland look like such small boys with delusions of grandeur, World Rugby, with its technical report, came across as precisely that themselves.

Ireland, it plainly — and quite correctly — stated, hadn’t the required standard of ready-made stadia. Nor had it a tournament track record of its two competitors. “The [Irish] cities lack prior experience of an event on the scale of RWC,” it declared, “and therefore scored lower than France and South Africa who have significant city delivery major event experience.” To read it another way, Ireland hasn’t hosted a soccer World Cup. It shouldn’t get the Rugby World Cup because it has no earthly hope of ever staging a Fifa World Cup or an Olympics.