‘We do have too many matches in Auckland’
IT’S a month before New Zealand and Tonga open proceedings at the 2011 Rugby World Cup and the IRB’s head honcho is sat at ease in a Dublin hotel wearing an open-necked shirt and an air of calm that belies the approaching bedlam.
Mike Miller, who also doubles up as MD for Rugby World Cup Ltd, is a picture of health. Tanned and trim, he is all smiles and bonhomie whether or not there is a dictaphone under his nose. It is impossible to imagine Sepp Blatter — his counterpart at FIFA — being as open and informal so close to football’s extravaganza.
The accent, 95% English with the hint of an American lilt, is a reminder of his birth across the pond but his mark was made in the UK where he studied and covered rugby as a cub reporter before earning high-level posts with the BBC and Channel 4.
These days Miller heads a team of 66 from the IRB’s Dublin office but left town on August 24 to fly south and oversee the last-minute bits and bobs that cause tournament organisers a million collective migraines but about which no-one else will ever know or care.
All told, it is a two-month tour of duty, during which time he will host numerous think-tanks on various aspects of the world game, attend 27 of the 47 games and travel the length and breadth of the two islands, all the while making sure RWC goes off without a blip.
How on earth will the man hold himself together?
“The way I deal with it is I get up at five o’clock in the morning and go for a run. I do that all the time, not just down there. That’s my time alone. I don’t listen to any music. I am just with myself. It means physically I feel good but it is also a little victory first thing in the morning.
“It clears your head but I am fortunate. I love sport, I love rugby, I love thinking and talking about it and so it is not a chore. A lot of people might see it as a problem but I don’t. I see it as an opportunity to be fully immersed in something that is a lot of fun and very interesting.”
Whatever happens now, Miller, the IRB and the people of New Zealand are entitled to think that they have weathered the worst after the earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter Scale that hit Christchurch last February, killing 159 people and destroying much of the city.
The IRB took their time to react. Deliberately. For a start, rugby and the World Cup was a long way down everyone’s list of priorities at the time but a subsequent visit made it all too clear that the AMI Stadium and the city itself was in no fit state to host games, teams or fans.
“Once we went down to Christchurch and saw the devastation, there was no way. We always have contingency plans in place and, for the most part, you think ‘puh, what a waste of time’, but on the rare occasion when you need it, they are vital. It is such a pity for Christchurch which, in a rugby-mad country, is the rugby-mad area but it is an opportunity for others. There are more matches in the new stadium in Dunedin.
“We do have too many matches in Auckland. That has caused problems because it is a city of a million people and we have 11 matches there, which is the most ever in one place but there have been far more problems for the people living down there than there are for us. I’m very happy we gave Christchurch every possibility to get things in place. They just couldn’t in the end.”
Christchurch may be reduced to the role of a bystander but the passion for rugby stretches from Surville Cliffs on the tip of the North Island to Slope Point at the base of its southern equivalent. There are, at the last count anyway, 196 countries in the world and Miller could walk down the street in 195 of those without anyone turning their head. New Zealand is the exception.
He isn’t exactly enamoured with that but accepts it as part of the bargain for bringing the tournament there for the first time in 24 years. That is just one among a string of headaches that come with holding the World Cup in such a small and isolated outpost and at a time of global economic strife.
A lack of hotel rooms, exorbitant prices and a slow take-up of tickets have all dogged the build-up in recent months — as they do most such events across the global sporting spectrum — but other realities have had to be swallowed.
Rugby’s global event has mushroomed in size and significance since it was first held in 1987. The net surplus, TV audience figures and numbers attending the games have all increased time after time but not this time.
The estimated surplus profit will be down drastically from the record €122.4m figure made in France four years ago while smaller stadiums will see a similar shrinkage for the tournament’s cumulative attendances.
The IRB knew all this when it awarded the hosting rights and made sure to offset it by handing the 2015 tournament to England where TV contracts and footfall will skyrocket once again so what will constitute a success this time around?
“How will we judge it? Part of it is that we will reach our commercial targets which, we have done, so we have enough money to invest in the game for the next four-year cycle and that the tournament is organised flawlessly.
“Beyond that, that everything works and there is no major issues for anyone; that the 95,000 people who come enjoy themselves; that the people in New Zealand buy into it and there is a good standard of play.
“With a World Cup, teams tends to not want to lose. In the pool phase teams play to win, in the knockout stages teams play not to lose but I do think the game is in a better place than it was four years ago and I expect more attacking and running rugby.” Here’s hoping.
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