The Irish Rugby Football Union's CEO Philip Browne has outlined a number of grievances to World Rugby over the recommendation of South Africa as hosts for the 2023 Rugby World Cup saying their bid has suffered "unreasonably".
Browne sent the letter to World Rugby's CEO Brett Gosper in which it questioned some areas of the independent report which was published by the sport's governing body on October 31.
The report, which evaluated the three hopeful hosts' bids across five criteria, recommended South Africa as the preferred option to host the 2023 World Cup. That recommendation, outlined here, saw World Rugby's board back their bid ahead of the council's vote on Nov. 15 which will rubber-stamp the host of rugby's global gathering.
The report was part of the bidding process -- World Rugby has emphasised it is "comprehensive and transparent" from the outset -- but it has caused uproar from both the France and Ireland camps.
Bernard Laporte, the FFR president, has publicly aired a number of issues he has taken umbrage with, and Browne has now sent a letter, which has been seen by ESPN, to World Rugby outlining his own grievances with the South Africa recommendation.
Browne emphasised the need to reiterate that despite the published report, World Rugby needs to reconfirm to the council "that they may vote for any of the three bids" and a vote for Ireland "is not a vote against the process" but in line with the process agreed upon.
The letter asks Gosper to answer nine questions around the report's recommendations around 'stadia', 'security', 'major event hosting experience' and 'financial, commercial and commitments'.
On stadia, Brown asks whether consideration was given "as to how South Africa will achieve full stadia, particularly across the pool stage matches involving lower seeded teams?"
It adds why just four percent of overall scoring was given to ticketing and why the bidders were scored equally despite "risk being identified with two bids". Regarding security Browne asks whether a "world class security organisation" was used to review this aspect of the bid.
With 'major event hosting experience', Browne queries whether Rugby World Cup Limited (RWCL) has done full due diligence over why the 2022 Commonwealth Games was taken away from Durban and if it was raised with the South African government.
And on 'financial, commercial and commitments', Browne asks if RWCL appointed "an experienced external organisation (Barclays) to conduct an independent sovereign risk assessment related to guarantees, and each of the guarantors, provided by each bid".
It concludes with: "We consider the mechanical nature of the technical review undertaken by RWCL does not properly capture these clearly material issues which we raise and as a result, in our opinion, Ireland's scoring has suffered unreasonably, relative to the scoring for other bidders".
SA Rugby declined to comment when contacted by ESPN. World Rugby will respond to Browne's letter.