Wallabies veto Cardiff for Wales in World Cup
The Australian Rugby Union, alarmed at an Anglo-Welsh pact allowing the Six Nations champions to use the Millennium Stadium, have condemned any home advantage for Wales as “highly inappropriate”.
They will now call for the immediate scrapping of an agreement allowing Wales to play most of their pool matches in Cardiff – an agreement based on the assumption that England and Wales would not be swimming in the same pool.
The Welsh slump to third-tier level left them exposed to the draw nobody wanted, alongside England and Australia.
It left the Wallabies fretting at the prospect of facing Wales in Cardiff as well as England at Twickenham.
WRU chief executive Roger Lewis’ shameless attempt to talk England into sacrificing home advantage to play in Cardiff instead increased Australian anxiety over the Welsh bid to do the same to them.
“We would naturally expect fairness and equity when it comes to deciding venues for the tournament and determining which teams play where,” an ARU spokesman said last night.
“To that end we would consider it highly inappropriate for Wales to be playing any of those matches at home.
“England is the host of the event, not Wales. We are mindful that the final decision rests with the Rugby World Cup board.”
Both Wales and Australia will have a major say when the issue hits the fan in the boardroom. The five-man directorate includes WRU chairman David Pickering and the former ARU chief executive John O’Neill, a World Cup bruiser who planned Australia 2003.
The board, headed by IRB chairman Bernard Lapasset, plans to have the entire 2015 schedule finalised by the end of March. Instead of confirming the original proposal for Wales-Australia in Cardiff, the organisers will now look to relocate it at Wembley.
Only a few months ago Wales believed they had removed the last vestige of opposition to using their 74,500-seater stadium to host up to eight matches. Its use as the chief supporting venue to Twickenham made commercial sense in helping the RFU maximise ticket revenue to meet the £80m guarantee made to RWC.
Australia’s demand for Cardiff to be a Welsh-free zone leaves last year’s semi-finalists facing the prospect of a World Cup on the road.
More seriously, it leaves the WRU and the RWC board with the problem of deciding what matches Cardiff can stage with sufficient box-office appeal to fill the place.
Ireland‘s match against France stands out. Scotland–New Zealand will be another candidate for Cardiff.
The commercial problems for Wales will not be confined to the tournament. Their pairing alongside England eliminates any chance of staging their customary pre-World Cup friendly against the old enemy in 2015.
Home and away matches before the tournament in New Zealand generated £2m in satellite fees alone.
Another ticklish issue for RWC will be over the opening match. At recent tournaments it has featured the host against the third-tier country in their pool. That would be England-Wales, a collision which, for commercial reasons, will probably be delayed until the last weekend of qualifying.
PETER JACKSON
