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News: Pressure group issue RWC warning

Features: The Scrum.com State of the Union Address - Part 1

Tournaments/Tours: Rugby World Cup | Rugby World Cup

The first World Cup in 1987 changed the rugby world irrevocably. Until that point the International Rugby Football Board (as it was then known) resembled an exclusive Gentlemen's Club but now rugby is a truly global game and the IRB is a fully professional governing body.

In the second of two articles at the start of the 2008/9 season John Taylor looks at the down-side of the State of the Union.

The International Rugby Board (IRB) is very keen to tell the world the 2007 Rugby World Cup was the biggest, best and most profitable so far.

They use it to promote their claims that rugby is a fast expanding, truly international game reaching out to every corner of the world.

Not so, according to a recently commissioned report which says that 'rugby's "narrow global footprint" and the fact that it is "not played... in the world's large and fast growing nations" are signs of its failure.'

The report, called Putting Rugby First, was published in July this year and damns the IRB with very faint praise claiming it is 'unrepresentative and undemocratic' and that its own governance is 'outdated and lacks transparency.'

Commissioned by 'a group of concerned rugby supporters who wish to ensure that the great game of rugby reaches its full global potential' it makes very uncomfortable reading for the world governing body.

There are now 115 member countries of the IRB (a statistic they are very proud of) but examine that more closely and a very different picture emerges.

It is estimated that there are 4 million players worldwide but 2.2 million of those are English, 3.3 million come from the eight founder nations of the IRB and there are fewer than 250,000 players registered in the top 10 most populous countries in the world.

The World Cup Final was watched on television by an audience of 33.1 million but 97% were from the founder nations and 27.6 million of those from Britain, Ireland and France.

The top 10 countries in the IRB rankings constitute about 5% of the world's population - less than the population of the USA - prompting the authors of the report to conclude, 'Rugby has not yet made a serious impression on most of the world.'

Although it puts globalising rugby as one of its main aims the very structure of the IRB puts severe limitations on the way it sets about doing it.

The eight founder nations have two votes each on the IRB Council. Four 'second tier' nations have one vote each and the other 103 countries share just six votes through their continental representative bodies.

Every key decision requires a 75% majority so four Foundation Unions can veto any proposal even if it is supported by the other 111 nations.

That effectively means that nothing can be done without the approval of the big eight and they still carve everything up as they wish.

This is why Argentina will have to wait at least four years before they can join the Tri-Nations. New Zealand, South Africa and Australia have lucrative television deals in place and they only want Argentina on board if they can pay their way so even then it is not guaranteed to happen.

Argentina have to establish a professional set-up at home and get themselves a television deal. They will not be able to do that without considerable help from the IRB and as yet there is no detailed plan.

In the meantime there is a vague promise of more international matches against major countries. The team that finished third in the World Cup surely deserves more than that.

It is also the reason why New Zealand will be hosting the next World Cup. The 'Old Boys' closed ranks and looked after one of their own.

As the report says, 'Looked at unsentimentally, it (NZ) is a small country of limited commercial potential - the rugby market in New Zealand is saturated.

'Japan offered a much larger economy of far greater appeal to sponsors..... a Rugby World Cup in Japan would have provided a springboard to the fast growing Asian economies.'

There has not yet been a World Cup outside the Founder Unions and England are favourites to host the 2015 tournament so it looks as if the first chance of expanding the horizons will be 2019.

No wonder the report concludes that 'it (the IRB) feels parochial and complacent.'

The authors point out that cricket - arguably as conservative as rugby until recently - has come up with new innovative measures such as investing heavily in new forms of the game such as Twenty20 whilst Formula One now has 40% of its 18 race calendar based in the growing markets of Asia.

Unless rugby embarks on a major programme of expansion there is no chance of getting Sevens into the Olympics, for example.

It would be a perfect fit and it has to be a major aim because it unlocks enormous amounts of funding - Nigel Melville, CEO of the USA Rugby Union estimates that government funding of $50 million would be available to him if rugby were an Olympic sport - but the numbers just don't stack up.

Only 29 countries attempted to qualify for the last Sevens World Cup and many of those do not have Women's teams - an essential pre-requisite.

Dr Syd Millar, then IRB Chairman, was quite shocked when he discovered that Squash and Karate won more votes for inclusion in 2012 than rugby but it was entirely predictable.

They are far more global than rugby and again you have to agree with the conclusions of the report - 'Rugby's footprint does not yet meaningfully touch the world's largest countries.'

Despite all the IRB rhetoric about global expansion rugby is still only a major sport in eight countries and if they seriously want to change that they need a revolution from within.

At the moment the governing body is little more than a self perpetuating oligarchy.

While professional rugby is thriving in the Founder Unions and is sucking in the best players from the rest of the world the smaller nations are foundering and that spells trouble for the future.