Welford Road No Longer Being Considered for 2015

[RWC2011Fan]

http://www.espnscrum.com/2015-rugby-world-cup/rugby/story/170866.html
Kinda sucks, would be good to have more rugby grounds at the World Cup.

 

[Rinzler]

Gutted to be honest. This tournament could easily have had 3 or 4 club grounds for the smaller games, and I don't see these larger football stadiums being filled. Have to wait and see what the ticket prices are like.

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Cardiff, that most well known of English cities.
Welford Road, while not big enough to host the more popular matches, would've been great for some of the tier 2/3 sides matches. Especially as Leicester is a rugby town, so you'd be guaranteed a good sized crowd.
Though that's not to say there won't be good crowds at a lot of the football stadiums - I've got no idea how the general public will react to the RWC. Hopefully (if the pricing is right) they'll get behind it, like with the olympics, and sell out every game.

 

[LittleGuy]

I'm very worried about the list of potential venues going into 2015. I think the Home Nations and French games should receive strong support, and the Southern Hemisphere sides(though to a slightly lesser extent Argentina) will be draws based on reputation alone.

However I think most of these grounds are way too big for Tier 2/3 matchups, Canada and the United States do have substantial expat populations and I suppose Italy isn't imposssibly far away for some of their fans to come over. Do the organizers really expect 40-50,000 fans out for games that could potentially feature Japan vs. Namibia or a Tonga vs. Romania for example? These matches would have been perfect to send to the more historic grounds and an atmosphere of a 15-20,000 seat stadium thats mostly filled(with passionate rugby followers as well) is going to look a lot better than 18,000 turning out to a 50,000 seat venue.

 

[SelimNiai]

Thats where the pricing comes in. If they can put these Teir 2/3 matches at a price that doesn't alienate the causal neutral, for example if Ashton Gate, my nearest stadium, gets a game say Georgia v Tonga then I'd look to go but not if it's too much.

 

[Nielsch]

Too bad Liverpool isn't being considered anymore...

 

[Nielsch]

And why would you consider two stadiums in the Tyne region? One would surely be enough to host the Scotland games. I'm sure one of those will be nixed. And why consider Birmingham and Coventry? Those cities are so close together.

 

[Feicarsinn]

Really really poor decision here. There are only a handful of really classic rugby grounds in England and with The Stoop, Franklin's Gardens and The Rec all being on the small side, Welford road should have been a dead cert. RFU looking to pay back the WRU for votes no doubt.

 

[psychic duck]

Thats where the pricing comes in. If they can put these Teir 2/3 matches at a price that doesn't alienate the causal neutral, for example if Ashton Gate, my nearest stadium, gets a game say Georgia v Tonga then I'd look to go but not if it's too much.

Apparently the tickets will be reasonably cheap at £10 for pool games

http://www.radiosport.co.nz/news/sprug/1066668264-cheap-tickets-for-rwc-2015

Apparently Wales may be prevented from playing home games at the World Cup.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/17233462

 

[Rinzler]

And why would you consider two stadiums in the Tyne and Wear region? One would surely be enough to host the Scotland games. I'm sure one of those will be nixed. And why consider Birmingham and Coventry? Those cities are so close together.

Just fixed your post to avoid offending the good people of Sunderland, but I agree with your point;they say their trying to spread the games around the country but they missed off a number of areas. No games in East Anglia for example, or dropping Plymouth meaning Cornwall has no games nearby.

Apparently the tickets will be reasonably cheap at £10 for pool games

http://www.radiosport.co.nz/news/sprug/1066668264-cheap-tickets-for-rwc-2015

Atleast that's good to here, Partially justifying the choice. I'll wait until I see those tickets go on sale first before I believe it.

 

[LittleGuy]

Apparently the tickets will be reasonably cheap at £10 for pool games

http://www.radiosport.co.nz/news/sprug/1066668264-cheap-tickets-for-rwc-2015

Apparently Wales may be prevented from playing home games at the World Cup.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/17233462

Very good news about the cheap tickets, hopefully this will out bums on seats.

I love the quote in the 2nd article. "If Wales are playing other Tier One nations in their pool we will make sure those fixtures are outside of Cardiff." Because you know who gives a **** if the Tier two and three sides are at a disadvantage playing what becomes effectively a 2nd RWC host playing at home.

 

[psychic duck]

Very good news about the cheap tickets, hopefully this will out bums on seats.

I love the quote in the 2nd article. "If Wales are playing other Tier One nations in their pool we will make sure those fixtures are outside of Cardiff." Because you know who gives a **** if the Tier two and three sides are at a disadvantage playing what becomes effectively a 2nd RWC host playing at home.

Cardiff hosting is a shame for whatever nations (except for Wales who have home advantage) will have to play there.

Cardiff hosted matches in 2007, the fans turned up for Wales vs Australia and New Zealand vs France, but there were dozens of empty seats for Canada vs Fiji and Wales vs Japan whilst virtually every game in France at that World Cup sold out, even the minnows Namibia match against Argentina got 55,000.

So they will likely have to play in front of empty seats if a neutral match, or play with Wales having home advantage.

Your point about Tier 2 side is a good one, and again shows double standards. I bet that may be their compromise as well, a team like Canada or something will have to play there again and get the disadvantage of playing against a home team.

 

[TRF_Cymro]

Cardiff hosting is a shame for whatever nations (except for Wales who have home advantage) will have to play there.

Cardiff hosted matches in 2007, the fans turned up for Wales vs Australia and New Zealand vs France, but there were dozens of empty seats for Canada vs Fiji and Wales vs Japan whilst virtually every game in France at that World Cup sold out, even the minnows Namibia match against Argentina got 55,000.

So they will likely have to play in front of empty seats if a neutral match, or play with Wales having home advantage.

Ticket prices were none to clever if I remember correctly, to watch Wales play Japan at the MS was something stupid. Add to the fact that quite a lot of tickets were sold to corporate and not the fans would explain why there was empty seats.

 

[psychic duck]

Ticket prices were none to clever if I remember correctly, to watch Wales play Japan at the MS was something stupid. Add to the fact that quite a lot of tickets were sold to corporate and not the fans would explain why there was empty seats.

Hopefully they will have learnt a lesson for 2015 then.

Since 2007, attendances for the lesser matches at the Millenium Stadium have actually been quite good, all near 60,000. Much better than the Wales Japan attendance in the 2007 World Cup.

2008 - 59,000 (vs Canada)
2009 - 59,000 (vs Samoa)
2010 - 55,000 (vs Fiji, this match got as many as Australia and South Africa did that year)

 

[TRF_Cymro]

To be honest its nice Wales once again is part of the WC but I'd rather see it staged in England alone.

 

[Nielsch]

Me too. I think the IRB should forbid this. New Zealand (2011) and Australia (2003) have shown that it is completely possible for a single country to fully host a RWC. The only reason why France, England, Japan and Italy (in its bid for 2015 / 2019) promised other countries a couple of matches is so that those countries would vote for them to organize the event. This should be stopped.

 

[RWC2011Fan]

If they do end up using the Millennium, Old Trafford, Stratford (Olympic), Twickenham and Wembley, I'd be interested to see how they distribute all of the big matches. Personally I think Twickenham should host less pull matches if it is to receive a good chunk of the knock-out stages, so with that in mind I decided to throw this together using some of the "big matches" (plus England's matches) from the 2011 draw and the above venues.

- Wembley Stadium: South Africa vs. Wales, England vs. Scotland, New Zealand vs. France

- Twickenham Stadium: England vs. Argentina, Ireland vs. Australia

- Old Trafford: Ireland vs. Italy, England vs. Georgia

- Millennium Stadium: England vs. Romania (big population of Romanians in Cardiff according to Wikipedia)

- Olympic Stadium: Australia vs. Italy, Argentina vs. Scotland

A lot of the bigger venues will probably end up hosting a lot of the 1st vs. 2nd tier matches, but that isn't unheard of (Wellington hosted AUS vs. USA and Christchurch was due to host ENG vs. GEO and AUS vs. RUS).

 

[Rugbybloke2016]

Great to see such a variety of cities named on this list to be honest. I would love to see Leeds or Villa Park get the nod. That would be wickid.

 

[Rinzler]

Great to see such a variety of cities named on this list to be honest. I would love to see Leeds or Villa Park get the nod. That would be wickid.

I think both will be dead certs to get picked; can't seem them missing out some of England's largest cities, especially as Ellen Road has history of hosting rugby games, so be it a different code.

 

[Teh Mite]

I wouldn't be shocked if Kinfsholm is also rejected. Sad that the rugby stadia, which are financed and developed specifically for hosting rugby, are ignored in favour of football grounds. Would be such an oppertunity to expand the game further and draw more people to go and watch games on a weekly basis. Odds are tickets will still be above the £50 mark for even small games.

Yet another reapson the tournament should have gone to Japan.