<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (snoopy snoopy dog dog @ Apr 11 2009, 08:23 PM)
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<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Monkeypigeon @ Apr 11 2009, 08:48 PM)
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Sure, but there's already plenty of growing interest in Eurpope, whereas Asia is the area with the greatest preospect for a large scale BOOOOOOOM in rugby interest.[/b]
I believe that Magners League participation will improve the standard of Italian rugby more than the NRL invasion which is taking place in the Japanese Top League. With rugby already established in Italy, hosting a World Cup could push the sport on even further.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Monkeypigeon @ Apr 11 2009, 08:48 PM)
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And by the by, Japan has the 4th largest player base with 125,000.[/b]
That looks impressive but another way of looking at it is there are 127,000,000 people in Japan.
125,000 / 127,000,000 = 0.000984251969 or less than 1% of the population. That's hardly massive interest in the sport. Give their league 10 years to develop in the knowledge that a World Cup is on the way and Japan could field a competitive team. My worry about them hosting the 2015 competition is that if they are badly out of their depth, it will affect long term growth of the sport.
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But you can say that about England's playing population is about 650,000 out of a population between 65,000,000 and 70,000,000 which is still very tiny.
Furthermore, you have to see how those 125,000 players are spread out. They usually play for corporate teams which are an integral part of Japanese companies and thus Japanese society.
This is a chicken and egg question. Do you use the World Cup to galvanise popular interest in the game and thus help create a competetive team or do you try to develop the team and create popular interest in the game and then hold a world cup?
If you go for the latter then there is no gaurantee that will ever happen. Its just another excuse to keep the World Cup within the club of ten existing nations in my view as Japan can easily host a decent Rugby World Cup. South Africa are utterly hopeless at football and yet are hosting the football World Cup next year. True, the public interest issue doesn't apply but the ability of the national team to compete should
not be an issue.
You want public interest? The frickin'
Prime Minister is on the organising committee. Football wasn't very popular in Japan (and still isn't really when compared to Baseball and athletics) before the World Cup was held there in 2002 but it helped boost support for it. The Rugby World Cup can do the same, especially if its backed by the major Japanese corps like Matsushita, Toyota, Suntory and so on. You tell the people that theres a major Sports event taking place in Japan and they will come, partly out of curiosity more than anything which is what happened with the football world cup.
At the end of the day, the iRB should have a responsibility to promote the game as far and wide as possible and the RWC should be used, much like how the Rugby Sevens series is at the moment, as a hammer to bash home the point that Rugby Union is a bloody awesome game. I have no qualms about the likes of Russia and the United States outbidding the existing top ten Unions to host a World CUp because by taking the game out of its ten union comfort zone we will be taking it to new places and promoting it as such.
Bring on Japan 2015 I say!
