LONG READ Is the Rugby World Cup 2027 the summit for Switzerland?

For a country dominated by the Alps, mountainous challenges are nothing new to Switzerland. But the country’s rugby team’s steady ascent up the men’s rugby pyramid and World Rugby Rankings has been nothing short of vertiginous.

Next season the Swiss will be competing at their highest-ever level having won promotion to the Rugby Europe Championship following back-to-back Grand Slam seasons in the third-tier Trophy.

It is opportunistic timing for a country already known for its punctuality, because the new qualification criteria for the next Rugby World Cup in Australia, which will feature 24 teams for the first time, has opened the door for up-and-coming teams like Switzerland to make a real go of it.

Four teams, not the customary two will automatically qualify from the Rugby Europe Championship with places determined by results in next year’s Championship alone rather than over a two-year cycle, as has previously been the case.

As a result, reaching the semi-finals of the Rugby Europe Championship in 2025 would secure the four teams their spot at rugby’s marquee event. Qualification could also have a bearing on which teams compete in Division 2 of the inaugural Nations Championship in 2026.

Whilst stepping up from the foothills of the Trophy into the dizzy heights of the Championship was the equivalent of their Eiger, making Rugby World Cup 2027 would be on another level altogether, Switzerland’s metaphorical Matterhorn if you like.

“We are so, so happy because we really focused on this objective but we know it is just one step. We see next year as a wonderful challenge and our objective is to do something incredible,” said long-standing head coach Olivier Nier.

“The dream of playing for qualification for the World Cup is wonderful and all players will make a big, big effort to make the top four. But the National Championship is something important for the future. If we play in that, we will play against good teams and make our level go up and up.

“I am sure it will be a very important competition for countries like Switzerland. The main objective we have is to be part of this competition.”

One of the players who has been with Nier from the very start of the transformation, in 2016, is second-row forward Tim Vögtli.

Vögtli, capped 30 times, says Switzerland’s achievements thus far are starting to catch the attention of a country with only 1,900 registered active male rugby players and is largely unfamiliar with the sport.

An expanded World Cup gives us an added opportunity. I don’t ever want to say achieving it in old system was impossible but it is now a lot more achievable.

“I have already got some people temporarily booking their calendar for 2027 just in case,” Vögtli said.

“An expanded World Cup gives us an added opportunity. I don’t ever want to say achieving it in old system was impossible but it is now a lot more achievable.

“To be a part of that season, knowing that from get-go we have to show what we can do, is a difficult challenge but an exciting challenge

“The potential to play Georgia and teams like that is something I thought I would never say.

“We have played against teams like Portugal and the Netherlands and Portugal are a great example to us of where you can go with hard work and a strong team culture.

“To get to the next World Cup, we must get past teams like this. It’s a goal we should be aiming for.”

The multi-lingual lock, who speaks Mandarin, German, English and French, is the epitome of the eclectic nature of the Swiss squad.

While born in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, to Swiss parents, Vögtli moved to Shanghai with his family when he was one and was schooled there, at a British International School, where he discovered rugby, before moving to the U.K. to study Mechanical Engineering at the University of Surrey.

Now he is back in Switzerland, working in the supply chain for shoe company, On, and playing club rugby for reigning Swiss champions, GC Zurich – one of seven Swiss clubs from the 38 in the country’s rugby structure to supply players to the national team.

There is also a strong French contingent, from Pro D2 or below, and five English-based players, including Vögtli’s brother Jorn, a newer addition to the national team, who is with Oxford Harlequins

We have more and more good local players, we have worked a lot with them during the winter. For the last three years all the talented players have come to the elite centre to train whilst the Championship stops during winter.

Olivier Nier, Switzerland head coach

For next year’s maiden Rugby Europe Championship campaign, coach Nier hopes to be able to call upon two Top 14 players in Toulouse hooker Guillaume Cramont and Stade Francais loose forward Pierre-Henri Azagoh.

“We have more and more good local players, we have worked a lot with them during the winter. For the last three years all the talented players have come to the elite centre to train whilst the Championship stops during winter,” added Nier.

“At the same time, I have a good relationship with coaches in France and England. In the last two years, we have had players from the Top 14, Pro D2, Federale 1 so we have a very good mix of players who play in France, the Swiss Championship and England.”

Whoever comes into the group will have to buy into the strong sense of team culture fostered by Frenchman Nier, explains half-back Donovan O’Grady, a South African who has a Swiss mother and is on the books of Blackheath FC in England.

🇨🇭Switzerland tumpaskan Ukraine 68-0 untuk sahkan kejuaraan ‘Grand Slam’ mereka dalam Rugby Europe Trophy tahun ini!

Switzerland menang 5/5 perlawanan dan dijangka akan naik ke RE Championship tahun hadapan. Promosi ini bermakna Switzerland masih berpeluang layak ke RWC27 pic.twitter.com/z8emvdebhX

— 15 Sebelah (Malaysia Rugby 🇲🇾) (@15Sebelah) April 13, 2024

“It is probably one of the best team environments I have been a part of,” said O’Grady, a player development manager for the Rugby Players’ Association in England, looking after the interests of Saracens and Harlequins players.

“On the Thursday night before home games, we have the traditional team dinner where everybody brings something from their home and tells a story of why they have brought it; it adds a different meaning to why we all want to be part of the same team.

“We’ve got South Africans, a few English boys, we’ve got some Italians, a guy from Argentina who’s been living in Switzerland … it’s a real mix of united nations, but we try and keep it as traditional to Switzerland as we can.

When we get our first caps, we get a traditional Swiss farmer’s hat, we wear traditional Swiss shirts after games as well so we try and stay connected even though we are from all over the place.

Donovan O’Grady

“When we get our first caps, we get a traditional Swiss farmer’s hat, we wear traditional Swiss shirts after games as well so we try and stay connected even though we are from all over the place.

“We love to have meetings about meetings too, which is very Swiss. One of the German boys (Tim Vögtli) has been here for quite a while, he’s our fines master. If you are two seconds late, you’ll get fined.”

Nier’s project, which is eight years in the making, started in 2016 with Eric Melville – the first South African to be capped by France – by his side. Just one year later, though, Melville died suddenly, aged 55. Honouring his legacy is important to everyone involved with Swiss rugby.

“Eric was a very good friend and when we started this adventure, I asked him to come with us and build the project,” said Nier.

“He was incredible with other people and his heart was enormous, he gave the players so much confidence and when he was gone, it was a very hard moment for all of us.

“Every game we play we always send a nice message to his family to his wife and two girls and a boy and we always speak about him before every game because it is important for us to remember him and his legacy.”

Nier has coached in France at Grenoble, Brive, Massy and Aix-en-Provence, where he became good friends with Bath owner Bruce Craig and went to the 2011 World Cup as part of Romania’s coaching team.

When he and Melville took charge of Switzerland they were ranked 35th in the world, and now they’re at an all-time high of 26th.

“We have had two consecutive Grand Slams, winning all of last year’s games and this year’s, which is always nice feeling for the players and coaches, to have that consistency of performance,” added Nier.

“We’ve worked for a long time together, all the staff arrived in 2016, and we really built the project step by step. I think it is a result of the passion and hard work combined.”

If we want to develop rugby in Switzerland it is really important we play rugby in different places, to show that it is a sport of all Swiss people.

Vögtli made his debut against Moldova in the first of Switzerland’s seven years in the Trophy and believes the team’s upturn in fortunes is down to a growing sense of self-belief and a winning mentality.

“It’s amazing, sometimes I have to kind of like pinch myself,” he said about the team’s rise.

“A lot of individuals who have joined in the last few years kind of take it for granted but in 2016, when I first arrived, there were a lot of near misses, where we were edged out of a win.

“Covid was one time we could have gone up but it disrupted a critical game we had against the Netherlands.

“From a coaching standpoint, not much has changed, but I think the ideology and mindset has changed a lot.”

In a bid to win the hearts and minds of the Swiss people, there’s a policy to take home matches to different parts of the country.

The Grand Slam-clinching, 68-0 win over Ukraine in April was played not in the French heartlands but in Zurich. The Swiss Rugby Union’s decision to play the game in a football-dominated city was rewarded with a record crowd of circa 2,500.

“If we want to develop rugby in Switzerland it is really important we play rugby in different places, to show that it is a sport of all Swiss people,” said Nier.