(Reuters) – World Rugby mentioned on Wednesday they presently “don’t want to discover” the idea of the brand new World 12s match after a session with key stakeholders of the game.
The 12-a-side match, chaired by former Rugby Soccer Union chief government Ian Ritchie, was launched in September with the intention of bringing $344 million into the game over the subsequent 5 years.
“World Rugby has shared the views of nationwide unions, worldwide and home competitions to the group proposing World 12s and confirmed that stakeholders don’t want to discover the idea additional at the moment,” a World Rugby spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.
“It is a place endorsed by the World Rugby government committee {and professional} sport committee, which incorporates representatives from throughout the elite males’s and ladies’s sport.
“The precedence for the game is advancing productive discussions concerning the institution of a welfare-focused, streamlined and harmonious worldwide calendar.”
The inaugural World 12s males’s match is scheduled to happen in August 2022 in England, whereas the ladies’s competitors will kick off the next yr to forestall it from clashing with the ladies’s World Cup, which has been pushed again by a yr.
“World 12s has been, and continues to be, in common contact with World Rugby,” mentioned Rowena Samarasinhe, who was appointed the match’s chief government earlier on Wednesday.
“We’re optimistic that, even throughout the restrictions posed by the present calendar, World 12s will be capable to host a match in August 2022 that features plenty of the sport’s main gamers, who won’t be impacted by fixture clashes at the moment.”
(Reporting by Dhruv Munjal and Hritika Sharma in Bengaluru, modifying by Pritha Sarkar)
