No friends here.

Ireland have revealed that they are bitterly disappointed that their Celtic cousins didn’t back them in today’s Rugby World Cup 2023 council vote.

France secured the showpiece event in the second round, with Ireland failing to even make it that far with just eight votes in total. It’s believe that England backed Ireland, but Scotland and Wales didn’t, nor did Italy.

Wales are believed to have followed the recommendation of the technical evaluation and voted for South Africa, because their chairman Gareth Davies is also a member of the World Rugby Council, its executive committee and a director of Rugby World Cup Ltd.

Scotland meanwhile are said to have voted for France, as they wanted to go with the bid that produced the greatest amount of revenue to World Rugby.

“The bottom line is that we were disappointed that Scotland and Wales didn’t vote for us.” IRFU chief Philip Browne said.

“They had reasons. Scotland wanted to go for the money and Wales wanted to effectively support Gareth Davies (Chairman of the WRU) , who was part of the evaluation process.

To be fair to Scotland, they have said consistently that they wanted to wait for the evaluation report was produced and they consistently said that they’d go with the bid that produced the greatest amount of revenue to RWC.

“In terms of Wales, the situation was that they wanted to see what the evaluation report was like, what the outcome of that was, and they felt duty bound, honour bound to support Gareth Davies who was on the board of RWC and part of the evaluation process.
“I can understand where they’re coming from.”

Independent.ie