Three into one does not go and the rival candidates were tripping over themselves into a desperate last effort to schmooze and charm the governing body into handing over the keys to the sport’s showpiece event.
Brian O’Driscoll was there for Ireland, Sebastian Chabal for France and Francois Pienaar for South Africa in the hope of persuading World Rugby that their case was the best.
A recommendation will be made next month which will be rubber-stamped in November as to who will follow Japan as the next hosts.
Ireland, having never hosted the tournament, carry the romantic pull, promising to cast aside political division to deliver a pan-island event which would be guaranteed to be the mother of all parties.
The women’s World Cup, hosted by Ireland in the summer, was seen as a dry run for the men’s event. It showed up some weaknesses – accommodation in Belfast for the final was a spectacular rip-off – but the Irish have responded with guarantees on hotel prices for fans for 2023.
France represents the more hard-headed option with the promise of wheelbarrow loads of euros – a currency World Rugby are instinctively more drawn to.
The £80m England had to guarantee to the governing body in order to stage the 2015 tournament will rise to £92m for Japan in 2019 and then to £120m in 2023. France, with their big, modern stadia in place, are wafting an extra 20 per cent on top.
The last time France staged the event in 2007, it put on a fine tournament, memorable for England’s Jamaican Bobsleigh team run to the final after being whitewashed by the eventual winners South Africa in the group stages.
However it did not hold a candle to the greatest World Cup of all, 1995 in the Republic, so dream-like Hollywood made a film of it.
Nelson Mandela, Pienaar and a rampaging Jonah Lomu in post-apartheid South Africa…it was a storyline as fantastical as it was fantastic and set against Africa’s unique backdrop.
For many reasons, there could never be another World Cup to match that one but it feels like it is approaching the right time to try.
Here then is the solution as to who should win the right to stage the 2023 World Cup. Three into one might not go, but perhaps three into two might.
Football awarded successive World Cups to Russia and Qatar at the same time and the IOC recently did likewise with the 2024 and 2028 Olympics. There is nothing to stop World Rugby doing the same.
The 2019 tournament is to be in Asia so let’s have an Irish World Cup in Europe in 2023 and a South African one in 2027. For rugby it might not mean double the money but it would definitely mean double the fun.
