Australia in box seat to host 2027 Rugby World Cup

The stars are aligning for Rugby Australia to successfully bid for the 2027 tournament despite the Wallabies’ poor performance.

The Webb Ellis Cup on display during the World Cup in Japan. Picture: AFP

Despite enduring the fallout from arguably the Wallabies’ worst performance at a World Cup, the stars are aligning for Rugby Australia to successfully bid for the 2027 tournament.

Hosting the World Cup would provide a welcome cash injection for Rugby Australia — on top of a scheduled British and Irish Lions tour in 2025 — with downward pressure on the next TV rights deal and a looming ugly court battle with Israel Folau threatening the code’s finances.

Australia is hoping that World Rugby will follow the lead of the International Olympic Committee and award two World Cups at the same time, while ironically also ensuring tournaments do not compete with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the hoped-for Brisbane Games of 2032.

With France hosting the 2023 World Cup, Australia is hoping to convince World Rugby to bring the tournament back to Australia, 40 years after it co-hosted the inaugural 1987 event with New Zealand and 24 years after its solo staging of the 2003 tournament. But its main rival is shaping up as the United States which, like the Japanese market now being tapped, is regarded as the last major market to be explored.

But given that the USA will stage the 2026 FIFA World Cup before hosting the 2028 LA Olympics, World Rugby may feel that allocating it the 2027 tournament might be straining the marketplace. In that event, Australia hopes to surf through and secure the 2027 tournament, which would also put a reasonable gap between it and the 2032 Olympics for which Brisbane currently is the frontrunner.

In April, the Federal government allocated $1 million to RA to begin serious feasibility work, which enabled it to send planners to Japan, along with government representatives, to observe the current tournament. If RA does decide to push ahead, it would need a serious commitment by the government in next year’s Federal Budget in May. Although it was beaten by New Zealand for the next women’s World Cup, Australia believes it has demonstrated its serious intent and the next step, hopefully, will be to persuade SANZAAR to support it as the southern hemisphere’s sole candidate for 2027.

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Given that the 2015, 2019 and 2023 tournament all have been allocated to northern hemisphere nations, it is expected the 2027 tournament will be sent south of the equator. If World Rugby’s plan is to develop the game in the US, it could well decide to follow the same pattern it used in sending the 2015 tournament to an established market, Great Britain, while using the additional four years to prepare Japan. In that event, Australia in 2027 leading into the USA in 2031 could be ideal.

“The Rugby World Cup is the third largest sporting event on the globe,” said Anthony French, RA’s head of professional rugby. “It has the ability to shift the dial on a range of metrics for host nations and cities and generate significant economic return. For host unions, it not only provides financial benefit but, as we are seeing in Japan, it has the ability to inspire a whole new generations of fans and players.”

Meanwhile, Geoff Stooke, the former Australian Rugby Union director, has circulated a discussion paper calling for the voting members — principally the states and territories — to lobby for a special general meeting at which the Rugby Australia constitution could be overhauled in terms of the procedures for the nomination and election of board members.

Stooke, who resigned from the board in protest at the decision to cull the Western Force from Super Rugby in 2017, said that once the constitution had been amended “some changes being emotively proposed at present can be considered”.

This appears to be the first hint of a move to possibly topple Cameron Clyne as RA chairman.

Stooke also warned that in the event of the Folau case going badly for RA, it could affect its solvency. In that event, it could well influence the decision of directors to remain on the board and for outsiders to volunteer to become directors. In his discussion paper, Stooke said that placing a director of rugby — Scott Johnson — over Michael Cheika in the lead-up to the World Cup was “disrespectful and didn’t seem to work”. In his opinion, RA needed either to remove Cheika or support him.

“We need to find a replacement but I strongly believe we need to get our structures right before we rush in to appointing another coach,” Stooke said. “There could be board changes, there are likely to be management changes and hopefully there are constitutional changes. ’’