Cup Spillage

Can’t wait to see how this one pans out - England’s Rugby Union looks set to be battling it out with Japan to get the 2015 Rugby World Cup now. After all the sanctimonious bleating about the desperate need to “grow the game” in 2011 and how NZ was simply a backwards, sympathetic choice, let’s see how the Old Farts at Twickenham spin this one out. The Poms heavily invested in Japan for 2011, and were openly against NZ getting it. Either choice next time, its laying out RWC right in the grubby palms of even more massive corporate ownership. Its already pimped out to the likes of Visa and Heineken, but take it to either Japan or England and the scramble for a slice of Brand Pie will be frightening. And if Kiwis think they are going to have steep ticket prices for 2011, they may be surprised in four and eight years time. I’d rather have our “World Cup of Campervans” in 2011, as BBC Rent-a-Rant Brian Moore described it, than some sponsors only, boardroom sausage fest.