‘The largest final in history’: Melbourne’s plan to snatch the jewel in rugby’s crown

On Monday morning, the other “Eddie Everywhere” – returned Wallabies coach Eddie Jones – will step onto the Melbourne Cricket Ground and issue a challenge to fill every seat in July.

For the second consecutive year, Melbourne will host the single, much-coveted Bledisloe Cup game in Australia, in which the Wallabies and the All Blacks will do battle for the cherished, but rarely sighted, trophy.

The fixture is part of a lucrative content deal struck between the Victorian government and Rugby Australia in 2017 for six Wallabies games over eight years, including one against the British and Irish Lions in 2025.

Estimated to be worth about $20 million, it was a good deal and Melburnians got value for money last year when a sold-out Marvel Stadium hosted one of the most dramatic Bledisloe clashes in modern history.

But the deal may also bring Melbourne far greater value than it could ever have imagined, via a series of factors that ranged, at the time, from vaguely possible to entirely unpredictable. And those same factors could soon force a reckoning for the recently elected NSW government on where it places major events spending in its priorities.

After declaring an interest in bidding for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in 2017, Rugby Australia began working on a bid in 2019 and, with a star-studded bid team over the next three years, got the job done. Next week marks the one-year anniversary of World Rugby awarding the 2027 men’s tournament, and the 2029 Women’s Rugby World Cup, to Australia.

Players, coaches and administrators gather at an Australian Rugby World Cup bid event at Taronga Zoo.Credit: Getty

World Rugby claims the men’s World Cup is the third-biggest sporting event in world sport, and is forecast to have a $2.2 billion impact on the Australian economy, and attract 200,000 international visitors.

Planning is underway but a decision about which city will host the crown jewel of the 2027 tournament – the Rugby World Cup final – has not yet been made, and a bidding war is about to get underway ahead of a decision by World Rugby at the end of the year.

Three venues are in the running due to a minimum capacity of 60,000: the MCG, Accor Stadium in Sydney and Optus Stadium in Perth.

World Rugby, the majority partner in a joint venture with host Rugby Australia, banks most of its revenue from the Rugby World Cup every four years, and aggressively seeks to maximise returns on ticket sales and commercial deals, including with governments for hosting rights.

The MCG is one of the venues in the running for the 2027 Rugby World Cup final.Credit: Getty Images

With Optus Stadium in Perth the smallest of the three venues, many see it as a two-horse race between Melbourne and Sydney for the final.

The MCG holds 20,000 more people than Accor Stadium, but Sydney lobbyists argue NSW is a proven venue in a heartland rugby state, having hosted the dramatic 2003 Rugby World Cup final.

But given the stars that have been aligning for the Melbourne bid, NSW may have to come up with a more compelling argument, a big cheque and an expensive infrastructure mic-drop, too.

Influential figures in Victorian sport, business and politics have been working towards the 2027 Rugby World Cup final since before Australia even submitted a formal bid. Melbourne business identity Paul Docherty, who is the chair of the Melbourne Rebels Super Rugby club, recalls speaking at a Friends of Rugby in Parliament dinner in 2019.

Homebush’s Olympic Stadium has barely been touched since hosting the Rugby World Cup final in 2003.Credit: Fiona-Lee Quimby

“We hadn’t even bid yet, but I was a bit cheeky, I said when we win the World Cup for Australia, we want to play the 2027 Rugby World Cup final at the MCG. It will be the largest final in history,” Docherty said. “I said it publicly, and it went mad, and then it grew its own legs.”

Then-Victorian sports minister Martin Pakula, who’d been wowed at the scale of the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan, pledged full support and when World Rugby officials visited Australia in 2021, assessing its bid, Pakula’s team guided them on a tour of the MCG. Over meetings and dinner, the Victorians sold the vision of an MCG final beating the Rugby World Cup attendance record of 89,267 fans, set for Ireland’s clash with Romania at Wembley in 2015.

The tour also included the Olympic Park sporting precinct next door, pitching the site as the spot World Rugby could fulfil its goal of having a week-long rugby festival before the final.

“That was the pitch to World Rugby. That capacity to not just bums on seats and sell tickets, we know that’s important. But we know we need to get the legacy side of things right. And thirdly, we know we can turn this into a rugby village, which is genuinely connected to the city, hotels, all the main sites,” Docherty said.

World Rugby officials toured the Australian Open tennis precinct in January.Credit: Getty Images

“You can walk from your hotel into the precinct, and walk back past all the bars. There is one flow, in terms of what you can do. The Australian Open – if it’s not Australia’s No.1 sports event, it probably should be – well, we’re pretty good at running that.”

It was attractive enough that after awarding Australia the tournament, a delegation of World Cup officials were sent to the Australian Open in Melbourne in January to observe the tournament, from a fan’s view and also operationally.

It doesn’t hurt Melbourne’s sales pitch that a couple of former Tennis Australia executives, who ran the Australian Open, are now high-ranking World Rugby officials, in the form of chief revenue and fan engagement bosses Richard Heaselgrave and Ben Slack. Nor that one of the members of World Rugby’s powerful executive committee is New Zealander Bart Campbell, a co-owner and former chair of the Melbourne Storm.

Even the pandemic lined up a few more stars for Melbourne, leading us back to Jones launching ticket sales at the MCG next week. The two Bledisloe Cup games in Melbourne were originally set for 2020 and 2021, but COVID forced Rugby Australia to re-schedule them to 2022 and 2023. With stadiums locked up by the FIFA Women’s World Cup in July, Sydney wasn’t able to mount a counter-bid for this year’s Bledisloe game.

The Wallabies at the MCG in 2007.Credit: Dallas Kilponen

So, if Jones gets his wish, a capacity MCG could provide not only a boost for the Wallabies in July but a well-timed audition for a 2027 Rugby World Cup final, just as negotiations begin. Three Bledisloe Cup games at the MCG have drawn 90,119 (1997), 75,127 (1998) and 79,322 (2007).

“They’ll get 90-100,000, for sure,” Docherty said “In terms of decision-making for the Rugby World Cup final, it is a really nice away for us to put our best foot forward, and showing what Melbourne can do and can provide.”

Ultimately, however, it’s the size of the cheque cut by the Victorian and NSW governments that will talk loudest. Informed sources estimate a package to host the final, a semi-final and a bronze medal game could cost $30 million or more.

How much the new Minns government is prepared to outlay, both in major events spend and associated infrastructure, remains unclear. Talks between the previous NSW government and World Rugby had included the possibility of a roof being put on Accor Stadium; countering the biggest ever final at the MCG with the prospect of the first indoor Rugby World Cup final.

Accor Stadium is one of three venues in Australia that could host a Rugby World Cup final.Credit: Getty

But it fell off the radar, and after being elected, the new premier declared he would not build more NRL stadiums, but prioritise schools and hospitals.

Venues NSW chairman and Sydney 2000 bid guru Rod McGeoch believes the new government is keen to ramp up major events spending, however, and a roof on Accor Stadium “is still in play”.

“There’s a new energy, there is definitely a feeling amongst the new government that Sydney is quiet, it’s not buzzing. And the impressions they’re getting from the activities in Adelaide and Melbourne and so on is maybe they’re buzzing better than we are,” McGeoch said.

“They want to do something about it. The idea of needing at least one of our stadiums with a roof is well and truly in play. The old government knew that, and the new government had those discussions.

“There is a feeling that if it can be afforded and sit within the appropriate priorities, Accor Stadium should have a roof on it. I am just not sure where we will land yet, with the financial priorities. We just have to let that work its way through.”

NSW Jobs and Tourism Minister John Graham declined to comment on a roof at Accor Stadium but said Sydney was proven as a host for major sporting events.

“NSW helped deliver one of the greatest Rugby World Cup tournaments in 2003,” Graham said.

“The NSW government looks forward to working with World Rugby, Rugby Australia and the Local Organising Committee and is committed to exploring all opportunities for Sydney and NSW to be at the centre of the action when the Men’s 2027 and Women’s 2029 Rugby world cups come to Australia.”

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