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Dan Carter has emerged as France’s not-very-secret weapon in its bid to win the 2023 Rugby World Cup.
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The two-time World Champion, world’s leading international points scorer and all-round rugby demigod, who has just started the final season of his big-money three-year deal with Racing 92, will help France’s bid team deliver its presentation to World Rugby representatives in London on Monday, September 25, France 2023 director Claude Atcher said in a wide-ranging Q&A interview with Le Figaro.
World Rugby’s official preferred bid recommendation will follow on October 31, followed by the decisive vote on November 15.
Carter’s support for the French cause is a slice of good news for the bid, which hit something of a rocky patch this week.
The FFR has been forced to issue an apology over its reaction on Twitter to a Deloitte technical study into all three bids commissioned by World Rugby.
— France Rugby (@FranceRugby) September 7, 2017
The report, released at the weekend, rated the France bid ahead of rivals Ireland and South Africa in three of five criteria, and second in the other two. But, as the apology pointed out, it did not officially put France ahead in the race to host the tournament.
Despite the embarrassment of that apology, France 2023 organisers remain publicly confident that they can continue to win hearts and minds among those who matter ahead of the all-important vote in just over two months’ time.
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“Unless there’s a cataclysm, I am sure we will win,” Atcher said. “From an economic and financial point of view, it [the French bid] is the best.”
France 2023 is piggybacking Paris’s successful bid to host the 2024 Olympics. Infrastructure improvements for the Games would be in place in time for the World Cup, if France gets the nod.
The French may be confident of the quality of their bid, but Ireland has long been the rugby romantics’ favourite to host the event after Japan.
