Rugby World Cup 2027 the focus for new RA chairman Hamish McLennan

New RA chairman Hamish McLennan has formed a high-powered advisory board to oversee Australia’s 2027 Rugby World Cup bid.

The Springboks celebrate after winning the 2019 World Cup. New Rugby Australia chairman Hamish McLennan is not holding back on efforts to win the bid to host the 2027 tournament. Picture: AP

Hamish McLennan has marked his first day as Rugby Australia chairman by announcing a high-powered advisory board headed by News Corp director Rod Eddington to oversee Australia’s bid to host the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

Rugby union has been in the wars in recent years, but McLennan wasted little time in demonstrating its ability to tap into the top end of town by assembling a seven-person advisory board that includes a former prime minister, John Howard; a former governor-general, Peter Cosgrove; and the most successful Wallabies captain of all time, John Eales.

Intriguingly, the committee also includes the CEO of the Fortescue Metals Group, Elizabeth Gaines. Her presence is further evidence of the growing thaw in the relationship between Fortescue non-executive chairman Andrew Forrest, the Western Force owner, and Rugby Australia.

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That was not, however, the reason Eddington wanted her on the board. “I’ll tell you why I want her … she is a very successful chief executive of one of Australia’s leading companies, Fortescue,” Eddington said. “She is west coast-based so I wanted a bit of geographic diversity and she brings that to the table as well.”

Gaines insisted she was delighted to have been asked.

“Hosting the Rugby World Cup in 2027 will further bolster Australia’s strong position on the world sporting stage, bringing considerable benefits across the entire economy and I’m honoured to be invited to join the advisory board charged with leading our bid to secure this outstanding opportunity,” she said.

McLennan said last month after being confirmed as RA’s next chairman that he intended making the 2027 World Cup bid one of his key priorities, and he proved that by turning to his friend of the past 25 years to head up the campaign. Eddington, a West Australian by birth, a Victorian by adoption and a rugby fan from his days as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, believes the 2027 World Cup can serve as “a light on the hill” for the game in these troubled times.

“I see that as a challenge because the worst thing we could do is to take it for granted that we are going to get it,” Eddington said.

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The last two World Cups have been held in the northern hemisphere, in Britain in 2015 and Japan last year, with the 2023 tournament to be staged in France. The expectation is that the 2027 tournament is almost certain to come to the southern hemisphere and SANZAAR, the body that controls southern hemisphere rugby, has already determined that Australia is its preferred — and indeed only — candidate.

No other rivals have emerged at this point but World Rugby politics is a notoriously tricky affair — note the difficulties in locking in a global calendar — and after spending 12 years as chairman of the Victorian Major Events Company, Eddington knows from hard experience how even the best-laid plans and the strongest bids can come unstuck.

He only has to look back on the circumstances surrounding the awarding of the next World Cup to realise how things can go wrong.

“It’s early days but, at the very beginning, my view from 30,000 feet is that we have to guard against complacency,” he said. “I am very conscious that the French will be hosting it in 2023 and everyone expected South Africa to win that year and they didn’t. If it is ours to lose, then we have to make sure that we don’t lose it. I know having been involved in lots of bids for lots of different sorts of events over a long period of time (and) sometimes something can come out of left field which costs you.”

That said, he believes Australia’s proven record of having staged multiple major events — including two previous Rugby World Cups in 1987 (as co-hosts) and 2003 — will help deliver the required outcome.

“Our job is very simple — to make the case that Australia is the best country to host the 2027 World Cup, that we have the facilities, we have the people who run the stadia and all the things around that and we have the people who will support it and will be very welcoming to our visitors.”

McLennan formally took over at 10.05am on Monday as outgoing chairman Paul McLean exited his final Rugby Australia board meeting, having delivered on his three key promises – to achieve sign-off on the 2019 financial report, to secure a broadcast deal for the remainder of this year and to organise a return-to-play date for Australia’s Super Rugby competition – July 3.

But there is still much for McLennan to achieve. The broadcast deal for the 2021-25 cycle is still to be negotiated yet before that can happen he must determine what next year’s competition will look like. And that could require some heartbreaking decisions to either cut some existing Super Rugby franchises or merge them.