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Rugby chiefs open to R360 role in women's game after World Cup success / Photo: © AFP
NYSE - LSE
Rugby chiefs open to R360 role in women's game after World Cup success
Global rugby chiefs indicated Monday the proposed breakaway R360 league could yet have a role to play in a women's game buoyed by a successful World Cup in England if it can be aligned with the current fixture schedule.
Four of the 12 franchises in the planned R360 competition, which has former England centre Mike Tindall, a 2003 men's World Cup-winner, acting as a frontman, will be women's teams.
But World Rugby chief executive Alan Gilpin, speaking Monday after tournament hosts England beat Canada in last weekend's World Cup final in front of a record crowd, said: "After what we've seen in the last five weeks, does rugby need to tear up all of its existing structures and do it completely differently? I'd argue no.
"We know that a number of the nations playing in this World Cup have already said, and will continue to say, that players who play in other leagues that aren't fitting within the schedules they have won’t be chosen for their international teams.
"With the WXV Global Series (World Rugby's women's international series designed to bridge the gap between World Cups), hopefully the certainty that we've provided now to national teams, federations and also to players is going to create a platform for investment to come into the sport.
"Hopefully R360 can be part of that."
Earlier this month, R360 withdrew its application for sanctioning by World Rugby and is looking to launch in October next year instead.
Gilpin, meanwhile, hailed the 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup as the "generational sporting moment we believed we could deliver".
World Rugby said a total of 444,465 tickets were sold for the tournament, including the record 81,885 who attended England's 33-13 win over Canada in last Saturday's final at a sold-out Twickenham, with 50 percent of all spectators during the event never having previously been to a women's rugby match before.
Further successes came from the bold decision to stage the opening match in the northeast football hotbed of Sunderland and to have finals day at Twickenham, the home of English rugby union, where an impressive crowd of some 50,000 watched New Zealand beat France in the third-place play-off just hours before the final itself.
Asked what advice she had for organisers of the next Women's World Cup, in Australia in four years' time, Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 managing director Sarah Massey said: "Go bigger and bolder. We had that ambition right from the start and you have to back yourself."
V.J. Coelho--JDB
