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Could Yesterday Mean The World Rugby Head's Worst Fears Will Come To Pass?

Could Yesterday Mean The World Rugby Head's Worst Fears Will Come To Pass?
Conor Neville
By Conor Neville
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The CEO of World Rugby is a chap called Brett Gosper, an Aussie with a stellar business career behind him and an ex-rugby player with Racing Club in France to boot.

The position he holds is equivalent to the position Sepp Blatter has held in football since 1998, though to draw any more comparisons with Blatter would be deeply unfair and possibly actionable.

He did make some headlines (mainly in Wales) earlier in the year, when he composed this rather risque tweet following England's exit from the Cricket World Cup.

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The Welsh newspapers responded with alarm, fearing that such comments could put pressure on officials to give England the benefit of the doubt on tight calls. Warren Gatland admitted that he was 'a little bit surprised' by it and said that the head of World of Rugby 'probably doesn't need to be doing that'.

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Gosper didn't apologise for the tweet but did clarify that he meant it would be good from an 'atmosphere' point of view that the home team do well.

The simple message was that it’s always nice for a country to do well in a tournament that they are organising, it was nothing beyond that.

This tournament is already going to be a huge success in terms of ticketing demand across the programmes, but only time will tell to see how well they do, and it’s entirely down to them how they perform.

We’re totally neutral: it’s up to each team to do what they can to get where they want to get in this tournament, and that’s the way it should be.

Last night, he tweeted his congratulations to the Welsh side on their 'courageous' performance and 'historic' win.

Assuming it is his worst fear that England exit early, it has yet to come to pass. Indeed, given Wales's woeful record against Australia, and England's comparatively decent record, there's a fair chance that Wales could still be the ones exiting the tournament.

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This revealing discussion from last year, in which Gosper took part alongside the likes of Stephen Jones, is something of an English love in... One contributor (seated beside Gosper) suggested that it was vitally important that England got out of their pool. Interestingly, all tipped England to win the World Cup in the end (albeit, Jones did so somewhat jocosely).

Read more: VIDEO: The Welsh Commentators Remembered To Be Impartial At The End

 

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