So, now that the needy have been eliminated, where do we think WR should be aiming their newfound $$$$ from the treasure chest that is a World Cup en France?
The Drua has clearly worked. Can the same be done in Samoa and/or Tonga?
Does Aus need help ensuring they’ll have a competitive team and a vibrant franchise, club and community game in four years time?
Should they send a decent tranche of the $$$$ go to Portugal (and Spain) to build on their success, on and off* the pitch?
How do they build on S. America’s increasing success?
Do the US need help or does the ever improving MLR, with some notable exceptions, mean they can be left to their own devices a bit more, albeit keeping an eye on the union’s finances to stop them going bust again?
With the mooted expansion of the World Cup how the above develops is critical, especially as most of the above nations will not be playing a tier 1 nation in the interim.
* https://x.com/francisaac87/status/17118 ... MV3j-SK8yQ
RWC - the next four years
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Puja
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Re: RWC - the next four years
Samoa and Tonga may have to share Moana Pasifika, but they do have them, which is a leg up already.
Australia is a difficult one. World Rugby does need a competitive Australia, especially across the next 4 years, but what exactly can be done to provide a short-term boost? It's not like a minor nation where providing professional coaches or funding for full time pro contracts or training camps will make a massive difference - Australia have resources; they're just using them to hire rugby league players. I don't really know what can be done for Australia. The obvious answer is to ditch a SR team, but which one? Perth is an important market and covers half the country, as well as having lots of private money and a decent fanbase, NSW and Queensland are sacrosanct, which leaves Melbourne - also an important market - and Brumbies, who are financially the right choice, but also the only Aussie team that's actually any good!
Portugal and Spain seem like low-hanging fruit, especially with the mooted expansion to 24 teams. It's not fair, but Georgia has always had the problem of being far away from the rest of Europe, relatively small, and relatively poor, meaning that the 6N could easily ignore them. Getting one or both of the Iberian nations into regular games and improving them to the level where they're regularly competitive and suddenly the 6N has a lot harder time denying the need for expansion/promotion and relegation. Maybe sponsoring a representative team into the ECC as well?
On South America, SLAR is an undoubted success and well worth the money put into it. It's a hard area for WR to work with, as the South American nations still have umbrage over Pichot being beaten out by Beaumont (and especially dislike the North American unions for voting for Beaumont when they had implied they would form a bloc with SA), but if it's politically possible, I would want to bring the Americas Rugby Championship back again. Chile, Uruguay, USA, and Canada all need regular games in a structured calendar and the ARC with Arg A and one of Paraguay/Brazil would rpovide that.
The USA remains a basket case in general and MLR is still struggling with growth - I had hoped to see regularly bigger crowds by now, and I had certainly hoped to be seeing an uptick in Team USA's results from players coming through. I don't know what would help with them. I'm actually kinda sad that the rumours of Eddie to the US didn't come to anything - it's just the kind of project that he'd be good at. Give him complete control to restructure how their national team operates and see what he turns up with. They need someone to take charge and lead them, certainly.
The main place I'd put my money is in the African nations and Hong Kong. With expansion, they are going to be the major weaknesses - we already know we'll get strong teams out of Americas and Europe, but Namibia have been nowhere and nothing at RWCs for too long and yet still qualify as Africa 1 every time. It's not like there is no raw material in the country - surely there is some capability to look at what the likes of Uruguay have done and build a similar system there. The same for the likes of Kenya - it feels like a little bit of funding and support could go a long way there. You'd certainly get more bang for your buck than pissing it away trying to sort out Australia or the USA.
On Hong Kong, they are undoubtedly the secondary power in Asia and they've got some good young talent coming through that needs to be encouraged.
Puja
Australia is a difficult one. World Rugby does need a competitive Australia, especially across the next 4 years, but what exactly can be done to provide a short-term boost? It's not like a minor nation where providing professional coaches or funding for full time pro contracts or training camps will make a massive difference - Australia have resources; they're just using them to hire rugby league players. I don't really know what can be done for Australia. The obvious answer is to ditch a SR team, but which one? Perth is an important market and covers half the country, as well as having lots of private money and a decent fanbase, NSW and Queensland are sacrosanct, which leaves Melbourne - also an important market - and Brumbies, who are financially the right choice, but also the only Aussie team that's actually any good!
Portugal and Spain seem like low-hanging fruit, especially with the mooted expansion to 24 teams. It's not fair, but Georgia has always had the problem of being far away from the rest of Europe, relatively small, and relatively poor, meaning that the 6N could easily ignore them. Getting one or both of the Iberian nations into regular games and improving them to the level where they're regularly competitive and suddenly the 6N has a lot harder time denying the need for expansion/promotion and relegation. Maybe sponsoring a representative team into the ECC as well?
On South America, SLAR is an undoubted success and well worth the money put into it. It's a hard area for WR to work with, as the South American nations still have umbrage over Pichot being beaten out by Beaumont (and especially dislike the North American unions for voting for Beaumont when they had implied they would form a bloc with SA), but if it's politically possible, I would want to bring the Americas Rugby Championship back again. Chile, Uruguay, USA, and Canada all need regular games in a structured calendar and the ARC with Arg A and one of Paraguay/Brazil would rpovide that.
The USA remains a basket case in general and MLR is still struggling with growth - I had hoped to see regularly bigger crowds by now, and I had certainly hoped to be seeing an uptick in Team USA's results from players coming through. I don't know what would help with them. I'm actually kinda sad that the rumours of Eddie to the US didn't come to anything - it's just the kind of project that he'd be good at. Give him complete control to restructure how their national team operates and see what he turns up with. They need someone to take charge and lead them, certainly.
The main place I'd put my money is in the African nations and Hong Kong. With expansion, they are going to be the major weaknesses - we already know we'll get strong teams out of Americas and Europe, but Namibia have been nowhere and nothing at RWCs for too long and yet still qualify as Africa 1 every time. It's not like there is no raw material in the country - surely there is some capability to look at what the likes of Uruguay have done and build a similar system there. The same for the likes of Kenya - it feels like a little bit of funding and support could go a long way there. You'd certainly get more bang for your buck than pissing it away trying to sort out Australia or the USA.
On Hong Kong, they are undoubtedly the secondary power in Asia and they've got some good young talent coming through that needs to be encouraged.
Puja
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