Croker key to World Cup bid
Browne admitted yesterday that the venues currently available to the IRFU would not suffice for any bid to proceed and added that the union “would need to sit down and talk about Croke Park” with the GAA if the event is to come to these shores.
“It’s something we’re looking at it,” he explained. “We haven’t formed a final view on it. We’ll obviously need to speak with the minister [for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadker] about it before we make any decisions to progress any further.
“We’ll be doing that over the next little while.”
Tenders for the 2023 hosting rights must be submitted to the International Rugby Board (IRB) by the end of 2013 with a decision due to be made by the global body the following year. But the odds are stacked against the IRFU.
The union would need, not just Croke Park, but a number of other GAA venues and probably even one or two others in Cardiff and Edinburgh if they were to succeed in staging the world’s third biggest sporting event.
The last two World Cups have been played off using 12 different venues while Australia managed with 11 in 1999. As things stand, only Lansdowne Road, Thomond Park and Ravenhill are available to the IRFU and meet the IRB’s requirements.
It would require only a vote of the GAA’s Central Council to make Croke Park available but other venues such as Semple Stadium would require a far more contentious agreement by the rank and file at the association’s Annual Congress.
Of more immediate concern are the fortunes of the Irish senior team whose heavy defeat in Twickenham last Saturday consigned them to their worst Six Nations points total since the 2008 campaign ended with a similar rout in London.
As is the case after every phase of the season, the union will be meeting with Declan Kidney — whose contract ends next season — to review performances and results but the chief executive struck an upbeat note when asked to evaluate the senior side.
“We’ll see what happens in June in New Zealand and in the autumn. There are new players coming through, there have been changes. If you look at the team that played for most of the Six Nations versus the team that played in the Grand Slam in 2009 you can see that there are quite a lot of changes. That’s the nature of things. Our academies are churning out players. We have our U20s who are making a decent fist of things at the moment, particularly given the size of our playing population. It’s cyclical. I wouldn’t be as pessimistic as some people.”
That pessimism has mushroomed since the weekend’s defeat when the injury and replacement of Mike Ross at tighthead brought to bare the Doomsday scenario many had feared for a scrum devoid of cover on the bench.
How coincidental it was, then, that the IRFU advertised for the role of a high performance scrum coach yesterday, one who will be responsible for implementing a new scrum programme at the country’s academies.
While welcome, the fact is that such a move is a good 10 years too late.
Even Browne has accepted as much but the 30-9 loss to England has, if anything, solidified his support of the controversial decision to limit the amount of Munster, Leinster and Ulster’s non-Irish eligible (NIE) players.
“The four provinces understand the issue and have begun talking about it. It was important to us that they did sit down together and start to look at it from our perspective,” he said.
“We operate on a partnership basis with our four provinces and it is important for us that they do well. It is also important that they understand that it is important that the national team does well and that the national team comes at the top of the heap. It keeps the whole professional game alive.”
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