IRFU CEO KEVIN Potts said the union cannot currently comment on the possibility of the finals weekend of the new Nations Championship competition being hosted in Qatar from 2026.
A report in the Telegraph last week suggested that Qatar is closing in on a €940 million deal to host the finals weekend for at least eight years.
The IRFU is one of the unions that will govern the Nations Championship, a biennial competition that will involve two divisions of 12 teams and take place across the July and November Test windows.
The overall winner and final rankings will be decided on a finals weekend at the end of November, with Doha in Qatar now seemingly in pole position to be the host city.
The Telegraph reported that the 12 unions in charge of the Nations Championship have signed non-disclosure agreements while negotiations continue with Qatar.
Asked yesterday about the possibility of the new competition’s finals weekend taking place in Doha, IRFU CEO Potts said he couldn’t get into the subject.
“I can’t comment on this,” said Potts. “It is not something that I can discuss today.”
Asked a more general question about the IRFU’s comfort with Irish rugby teams playing in Qatar and the Middle East, Potts again declined to answer.
“It’s not something that I can go into right now. When I can talk about it I will.”
Potts was able and willing to speak about the IRFU’s new four-year strategic plan for the sport in Ireland, with yesterday’s launch underlining the union’s big focus on the growth of women’s rugby.
The IRFU CEO also discussed the recent tweak to the national contract system in men’s professional rugby, whereby the provinces will contribute some of the players’ salaries from their budgets for the first time.
Leinster are set to have 10 of their players on national IRFU contracts next season, with the other three provinces only having one player each.
It’s hoped that the new measure will help address that imbalance.
“It’s one of those emotive issues,” said Potts. “We haven’t changed the central contracting model, central contracting still remains. It’s the contribution a province now makes to national player contracts.
“Every professional player in Ireland, male or female, is on an IRFU contract so what we now have is if you have a national player, you contribute 30% [of their salary] and that generates funds from the province into whom those players are with and that has already been reallocated across other provinces in terms of their elite programmes for next year.
“It was something we were looking at from the beginning of last year, we knew it was an issue.
“It will enable David [Humphreys, the IRFU's new performance director] to invest additional resources in those provinces that maybe don’t have the resources that a province like Leinster has.
“So, it hopefully will have a positive impact. We’ll keep that number under review, it may go up or it may go down. It depends on how things evolve.
“Fundamentally, it’s really important to Irish rugby that we have four provinces that are competing, four provinces that are generating players that are coming through to the national team.
“There are three provinces trying really hard to do that and we need to help them any way that we can. So the 30% provides resource for us to do that.”
