England coach raises Club World Cup concerns
16/04/2024 10:37
Exeter Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter said the proposed Club World Cup could cripple teams financially if a robust business plan isn't implemented first.
European bosses are believed to have signed an agreement for the Club Rugby World Cup in June 2028, with domestic leagues reportedly agreeing to accommodate it.
According to the UK's Daily Mail, plans for the global competition took a massive step forward following the signing of a memorandum of understanding, which could see the likes of Leinster, Toulouse and Saracens lock horns with southern hemisphere outfits like the Crusaders, Brumbies and Chiefs.
English Premiership outfit Exeter were dumped out of the Champions Cup by Toulouse last week after an emphatic 64-26 defeat in France, and Baxter has raised a red flag about the potential costs of another top-tier tournament.
"It is something that seems to have been mooted for three or four years," Baxter was recently quoted in the media.
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"If someone says to me in four years they have got the finances in place, they will cover everyone's travel costs, and there is a TV deal and all the clubs involved in it will get millions of pounds, and it helps all the clubs be viable businesses, I would say it is exactly what the game needs.
"If as what normally happens, and it's [a case of] let's try and give it a go, let's see if we can make this work and get some interest, I would be very hesitant about it because you can very easily create bigger issues in the game trying to solve issues as we have seen numerous times.
"Let's make sure it is genuinely viable before we start adding more competitions, games, and travel costs etc. etc.
"The desire to try it and see what it is like – and there is nothing negative about interesting games of rugby – is completely different to trying to make it a realistic situation," he added.
"If you look at things now, we're in a European competition, and the costs for us, literally overnight, from Sunday knowing the result [in the Round of 16 against Bath] to trying to book a plane to get over there to France, and we are only taking the smallest plane we can, our costs are going to be in the tens of thousands of pounds.
"Take the reality of that and make it a world competition and you go, as much as we all might want to do it, you have to have to be able to afford to do it."
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