According to reports, L’Équipe, a French daily newspaper, Rugby Africa gave its two votes to France in both rounds when World Rugby’s general assembly voted to decide the 2023 Rugby World Cup hosts on Wednesday.
This news will come as a blow to SA Rugby as there are several South Africans working for Rugby Africa, the administrative body for rugby in Africa.
Rugby Africa has an office at SARU House, SA Rugby’s headquarters, in Plattekloof, Cape Town.
Over the years, SA Rugby have given African rugby teams great support on various fronts and many African teams have been in the country to use training facilities, and often under the stewardship of South African coaches.
Africa Rugby president, Abdelaziz Bougja, is a French citizen of Moroccan descent, who has been living in France for 30 years.
Interestingly four days ago, Africa Rugby announced a sponsorship from APO (African Press Organisation), a media company which has its headquarters in Switzerland. APO’s CEO is a French national Nicolas Pompigne-Mognard.
Meanwhile, SA Rugby’s failure to win the vote to host global rugby 2023 showpiece has resulted in profound disappointment in their ranks.
SA Rugby president Mark Alexander suggested that certain “rules” were broken in the lead-up to World Rugby’s final vote for France to host the 2023 World Cup ahead of South Africa.
On October 31, World Rugby announced that South Africa was its preferred candidate to host the 2023 tournament following an intensive and independent evaluation, and this recommendation was widely expected to be ratified on Wednesday.
However, during the two weeks that followed the independent recommendation at the end of the of October, both Ireland and France conducted intense lobbying to attempt to sway the vote of World Rugby’s council members.
French rugby president Bernard Laporte slammed various aspects of the evaluation report, which he labelled as “nonsense”, while he questioned some of South Africa’s ratings in the categories related to crime and accommodation.
Alexander said that there had been some questionable behind-the-scenes skulduggery.
“The last two weeks were opaque. This is the first time World Rugby has made a recommendation and it’s being voted against. We will need World Rugby to modify that process to make sure that it works better for rugby.
“There was a protocol around the way we engaged,” he added. “A code of conduct. There were certain times over the past two weeks where [they] never stuck to those rules. We’ve never responded to any of the allegations [from France or Ireland] thus far.
“I don’t want to go into the details of what the rules are. They are on the World Rugby website. One of the things is the way we communicate with each other. At no point in time did South Africa attack any of the other bidders. It’s disappointing that we run a race with rules and then we all don’t stick to those rules.”
SA Rugby CEO Jurie Roux suggested that their bid rivals (France and Ireland) had not played ball.
“‘It would be naive to say that there aren’t (alliances) that play a role in the process. Our process was very transparent. We did our best and I don’t think we could have done more.
“We put forward a good bid which independent people agreed with. We could only trust that other people saw it the same way, which they didn’t, and we have to live with that. We just put forward the facts. In the end, people disagreed with that and decided that someone else (France) could do it better.”
Roux said they would not be “vindictive” by looking to find out who had voted against South Africa.
“You can’t agree with the process and then go cry foul afterwards. We won’t be counting the votes, and we won’t be phoning anybody. We will do the honourable thing, as we have already done.”
While ultimately accepting the outcome, Roux said they would certainly consider bidding for the 2027 World Cup. – African News Agency (ANA),
