World Rugby Chair Robinson confident of Wallabies World Cup revival

World Rugby Chair and former Wallaby Brett Robinson is confident the Wallabies have shown enough growth to be a real threat at the 2027 Rugby World Cup.

Robinson was high performance manager for the national side in 2003 under Eddie Jones as the team rode the home momentum to the Final.

They would go down to favourites and world number one England in extra-time thanks to a Jonny Wilkinson drop goal.

“For Eddie and I, it was a pretty difficult time, but the team outperformed in that tournament, relative to expectation, we'd had a bit of an up and down year domestically,” he told reporters.

“The big match against New Zealand was the game changer in that tournament. We kicked on to go to push England, who in the preceding 18 months had been really probably the leading team in the world and had come out here and beat us in the series the year before.

“The other really important piece of having a home World Cup is you've got your country behind you. We saw in the Sevens in Perth on the weekend the men's and women's teams playing in a final in their home country really matters. 

“As a Wallaby to be playing around your country and singing your national anthem with your country is an inspiring and elevating experience.”

The Wallabies are fresh off crucial wins over England and Wales before narrow defeats to Scotland and Ireland.

With the British and Irish Lions set to travel to Australia in July, Robinson was optimistic the tour could have the Wallabies positioned perfectly for a deep run at the World Cup two years later.

“I have absolutely every confidence that Rugby Australia and that Wallabies will do their utmost to be on the money in the tournament,” Robinson asserted.

“ I think the performances of the team, particularly on the Spring Tour… I was there at Twickenham (when Australia beat England), that was an incredible performance, one of the great Wallabies performances in the last 10 or 15 years, and that launched us into the Lions.

“I think that's created this energy around the Lions tour that then is going to carry us through from our perspective into the World Cup ticket sales.”

World Rugby was confident the 2027 event would shatter all monetary records for the event, which recorded over one billion dollars (AUD) for 2023.

“It's absolutely going to break records,” World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin said.

“2003 (World Cup) on the back of a brilliant Sydney Olympic Games was the Rugby World Cup that took the event to be the global event it is now.

“We’ve been lucky to build on that and the Rugby World Cup in France a couple of years ago was a special tournament and our responsibility is to keep commercialising Rugby World Cups in the best way we can because that is driving more and more investment in the sport.”