When New Zealand and South Africa kick off at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Saturday, there will be more at stake than victory in “Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry”, the four-Test series the Springboks lead 2-1. For World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin, the game is a key staging post on the road to the 2031 World Cup, which the US will host – a journey that could include Six Nations games on American soil. Now we’re starting to get submissions from the venue, the city, the state sports commission, on what are some of the commercials, economics, provision of services, city by city, venue by venue.
And then you overlay tournament window considerations, availability, NFL, MLS and other considerations, and then weather, team movement.” In Baltimore, the weather will be hot and sticky, thunderstorms a chance. For the All Blacks and Springboks, team movement meant a shared flight soon after last Saturday’s game in Soweto, won 29-24 by the Boks. The joint journey was unusual but the world is these days.
It’s the first weekend of the NFL season. That may seem like commercial suicide for Gilpin but he noted an irony: as World Rugby makes its big play in Baltimore (with the Ravens in Indianapolis to face the Colts), the NFL is in rugby territory, Australia, for San Francisco 49ers v Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. There’s some learnings you take from that, but there’s nothing like using the sort of venues that we could use for a World Cup.” Baltimore seems well set.
The field is grass so there’s no need to drop in a pitch, a process at some stadiums used by the soccer World Cup that prompts thoughts of scrums sliding about on pallets but which Gilpin said research showed would work for rugby. Charm City is close to New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC, American rugby towns also full of general sports fans and easily reached from Europe. On that score, depressingly, World Rugby has had to consider possible problems for fans flying in.
Put simply, the present US administration doesn’t like foreigners much. Then again, one group Donald Trump does like is white South Africans, “refugees” admitted in thousands. A thought: show Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration Nosferatu, how the Springbok pack destroyed the All Blacks in Soweto, and you’ll have rugby content pinged out to Maga faster than ICE can swarm a blue city.
Then again, best not tell Trump and his “communist”-hating pals South Africa’s pack is led by a terrifying hooker named Marx. So much for lefty facetiousness. World Rugby focuses on sport.
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