Prospect of Lions whitewash to keep rugby bosses awake at night

Injured skipper Will Skelton of Australia consoles Blake Schoupp after Australia was thrashed by Wales in the pool stage of the RWC in Lyon. Picture: Getty Images.

All those weeks ago, all that excitement and adrenaline. The Eurostar rolled into the Gare du Nord. France were set to play the legendary All Blacks. The station’s walls awash with posters of Antoine Dupont and his fellow Frenchmen.

The excitement was as good as tangible. French flags fluttered. Expectations soared, along with the freakish temperatures in the mid-thirties. And then they crashed out at the quarter-final stage.

The pre-tournament flags flickered briefly and disappeared, probably not to be seen until next year’s Olympics.

Paris, the rugby city of the world, so it seemed, was once more just beautiful old Paris. Pockets of partisans resisted reality and sang the French anthem along with a few familiar refrains but it was all too obviously singing against the southern hemisphere tide.

Less “the day the music died”, more the day the rugby died.

In France anyway. Now here we are, as far out as we’ll ever be from the next World Cup and World Rugby should be praying that Australia, hosts in 2027, pull themselves out of their present malaise. Eddie Jones obviously does not think the odds on an Aussie renaissance are too good.

He wasted time with his denials but nobody with the capacity to spell “integrity” doubted this was coming. Rugby Australia, who appointed the failed England coach, are anything but the safe hands our friends in the Antipodes so desperately need.

World Rugby’s fingers should also be crossed. Bill Beaumont, World Rugby’s chairman, has his writers recruited from who knows what businesses to recite the old claptrap.

“Seven weeks of glorious rugby” and those “unforgettable moments on and off the field” fail to lift the World Cup final’s program notes. World Rugby and its scribes may as well write the same lines for 2027.

The chairman acknowledges the players even as he thanks “the fans … the heartbeat of the sport”. Call me cynical, but I would hazard a guess that World Rugby believes the heart beats somewhere quite different from the playing fields of France and, in four years, Australia. Television is the great god.

It pays money and uses its reach to spread the game. The fans have a role.

Pack the stands and create the atmosphere that fools patriots or newcomers into believing what may be boring is interesting.

Television needs full houses.

We in the media require flags, pennants, atmosphere to relay the reality of the “global game”. So why the worry about 2027? Because if the 2025 British & Irish Lions tour is not competitive, the fanatical facade will be ripped down, leaving the next World Cup as nothing but a holiday destination.

The rumour is that Michael Cheika could be recalled. The former Australian coach who did a great job in 2015, did not fare so well with Argentina. Like England, they made the last four without ever looking imposing. The Wallabies need a fresh injection.

It is not headlines they need but competitive Super Rugby and Test teams. Team Australia beating the All Blacks, the Springboks and the Lions is the only injection that can breathe life into them.

Rugby league, Australian rules and soccer are all ahead at the moment. If the Lions were to whitewash them, the World Cup would become threatened by an apathy that translates terribly to television, whatever the hyperbole.

If the fans are a threatened species, the whole competition is endangered. Maybe even the entire World Cup, what with the US hosting in 2031. At least the Australians have a history and sense of the sport.

It’s true that the US won Olympic gold in Paris – was it 1924? – but its efforts on and off the field since have been pathetic.

The American dream is the same as rugby’s. All that broadcast money. Give the US a powerful Test team and the nation will throw patriotic weight behind them. England beat Chile 71-0, and Chile beat the US to qualify. Eight years is not a long time to make up this sort of ground.

Will 2031 become Ireland’s first World Cup win, hosted with its vocal American diaspora?

Every match overwhelmed with Irish-Americans not having to holiday in the Emerald Isle but desperate for tickets when Ireland play in Boston and New York. The Hudson turns green.

Well, Ireland had better lay their bogey and make the semi-finals (they’ll make one helluva noise in Australia too) but the Seine didn’t run green when Ireland lost to New Zealand.

They can’t be solely expected to create the atmosphere; but a meritorious mention must be made for exuberant Argentina fans.

Australia and the US’s World Cups will not be about the fans (other than the usual manufactured stories) but the funds to grow a game. “Growing” is one of those words like “sustainability”, “social inclusion” and “diversity” that makes people feel good about themselves.

When France bowed out, the tournament grandeur departed with them. There was anticlimax everywhere. It fell out of the skies, disguised as rain. What will a World Cup look like in Australia and the US without dramatic change, without the fans to fuel the frenzy that didn’t exist for the final fortnight in France?

The Times