Up and under: World Cup adds to the congestion

By WYNNE GRAY

In a shade over two years, the fifth World Cup will be starting in Australia and New Zealand.

At the moment there is some squabbling between the joint hosts and the organising Rugby World Cup Ltd about the costs of running the tournament. There is not, as some Northern Hemisphere officials would want us believe, a scrap between New Zealand and Australia about promoting the event.

A meeting will be held soon to sort out the host agreement issues and there is some pressure on Australia and New Zealand to sign a deal. But that may be nothing like the squeeze New Zealand faces when it tries to juggle the 2003 rugby season.

Under the IRB roster, the All Blacks have an end-of-season tour to France, England and Wales in 2002, and the following year have to host the same nations.

That will be on top of an inaugural Super 14 series, the annual Tri-Nations series with the Wallabies and Springboks, the NPC and the World Cup.

How the NZRFU and All Black selectors work that puzzle will probably demand a special training camp by itself.

It will be some exercise. When will the All Blacks squad for the World Cup be picked, for instance?

If it is chosen after the Tri-Nations finishes, perhaps in late July, will the All Blacks be given immunity from the NPC competition, and if so, how will they be kept sharp for the RWC which is supposed to start in October?

And would they get a crack anyway if the non-selections we see now with some All Blacks are repeated in 2003?

What sort of RWC audiences will there be if Iceland meet Taipei at Ashburton while the spectators have a choice to watch Canterbury play Otago in the NPC at Christchurch?

Until a new deal is signed with News Corp or whoever after 2005 for the continuation of the Super 14 and Tri-Nations competitions, that huge sort of congestion will not go away.

Australia could have staged the next World Cup by themselves and in many ways it would have been logistically better.

A self-contained tournament, like the magnificent offering in South Africa in 1995, would be far better than the 1991 and 1999 events in Britain and France.

New Zealand, however, could not host the tournament alone.

It has simply become too big an exercise, with the facilities and infrastructures too inadequate to cope with a five-week-long tournament.

Some believe, after seeing the Lions tour of Australia and the huge crowd support which followed them, that New Zealand will even struggle to cope with the Lions tour of 2005.

New Zealand's best RWC option was to tag along with Australia and the result will be the country hosting two pools, having two quarter-finals and one semifinal.

Meanwhile, it seems England may at last have accepted the error in the geographical dispersion of the 1991 and 1999 tournaments.

They have confirmed they will bid alone to host the 2007 RWC. They are not willing to co-host the series with France again.