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Will All Blacks captain Richie McCaw end the 24-year RWC drought tonight (AAP Image/Patrick Hamilton)
With the Richie McCaw-led All Blacks and Thierry Dusautoir-skippered France set to finalise the Rugby World Cup at Eden Park tonight, the curtain will fall on yet another example of where the International Rugby Board is crippling a great game.
Not only has New Zealand done a superb job hosting the seventh edition in a country with less population than Sydney, but they will lose over $40 million for the honour.
Simply because the IRB’s creed is greed.
The IRB takes all RWC television, sponsorship, and corporate boxes money, and all advertising around the grounds.
To magnify the one-way traffic, New Zealand paid the IRB $150 million for the right to host, leaving the NZRU with ticket sales as the only income.
Creed is greed alright.
The RWC is the IRB’s cash cow, ostensibly to promote rugby around the world for the next four years, and improve the standards of the lesser light nations.
Bollocks.
The top nations keep getting stronger by constantly playing against each other with the Six-Nations and Tri-Nations, plus regular mid-year and end-of-year tours between hemispheres.
But the lesser nations remain weak playing among themselves with the Pacific Nations Cup – Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Japan – leaving Argentina, the USA, Canada, and Romania as floaters, organising their own international itineraries.
Argentina’s scheduled to make it the Four-Nations with the All Blacks, Wallabies, and Boks, next year. If it happens, it will be a huge boost for the Pumas.
While Georgia, Namibia, Portugal, Russia, Spain and Uruguay have a tournament-type arrangement every year.
As do China, Germany, India, and Mexico.
Laughable.
But rarely does the twain meet between the haves and the have nots.
So where does all that RWC money go, somewhere in the vicinity of $300 million to $500 million every four years?
It’s rugby’s best kept secret, so is the actual amount.
RWC 2011 produced only one unlikely result – Tonga beating France 19-14 came from left field, especially after Tonga had been beaten by minnow Canada 25-20, and flogged 41-10 by the All Blacks in the earlier Pool rounds.
The biggest shock result, Ireland dumping the Wallabies 15-6 upset the balance of the play-offs for the men-in-gold who paid dearly for not turning up to play.
But the rest of the 45 games were predictable, so what has the IRB done in the last four years with all that cold hard to improve the overall standard among the many minnows in the 20-strong qualifiers?
Nothing.
But there is a moment of truth looming, if the NZRU goes ahead with the threat to withdraw from the 2015 RWC in England unless there’s a far more equitable financial arrangement in the future.
The governing body needs an uppercut, an awakening to what’s fair and just to rugby across the globe. Hiding in Dublin’s ivory tower has run its course.
A no-show from the men-in-black in 2015, hopefully as deserving reigning champions, would be impossible for the IRB to explain to potential television execs, sponsors, corporates, and advertisers.
The RWC would justifiably collapse.
So go for it NZRU, as the only country with enough clout to make a telling impact and right so many wrongs.