Webb Ellis Cup in Cape Town

Feb 19 • General News, International, South Africa • 1587 Views • Comments Off on Webb Ellis Cup in Cape Town

Rugby World Cup

Hosted once every four years, the Rugby World Cup is the game’s centrepiece event
The third largest sports event in the world after the Olympics and Football World Cup
Four pools made up of the world’s top 20 teams compete for the rugby’s greatest prize, the Webb
Ellis Cup
Rugby World Cup is the sport’s financial engine, generating approximately 90 per cent of World
Rugby’s revenues for reinvestment in the global game over the four-year cycle
The record-breaking success of England 2015 is enabling World Rugby to invest GBP £482 million at
all levels of the game between 2016 and 2019, eclipsing the previous four-year cycle by 38 per cent, to
ensure strong and sustainable growth
Rugby’s values: integrity, passion, solidarity, discipline and respect

Rugby World Cup 2019

Rugby World Cup 2019 takes place in Japan from 20 September – 2 November 2019
Japan 2019 is the ninth edition of rugby’s showcase global event, the first in Asia
48 matches hosted across 12 match cities
All 20 teams have now qualified for Japan 2019:
o Pool A – Ireland, Scotland, Japan, Russia, Samoa
o Pool B – New Zealand, South Africa, Italy, Namibia, Canada
o Pool C – England, France, Argentina, USA, Tonga
o Pool D – Australia, Wales, Georgia, Fiji, Uruguay
Rugby World Cup 2019 is also supported by six worldwide partners: DHL, Emirates, Heineken, Land
Rover, Master Card and Société Générale
Tournament preparations are firmly on track with more than 2.5 million ticket applications to date, the
agreement of the 51 team bases, oversubscribed volunteer programme, successful test matches in
RWC venues including Oita, Kobe and Sapporo Dome
Over 400,000 fans are expected to visit Japan during RWC 2019
The economic impact is unprecedented and nationwide: Y216.6 billion (£1.5 billion) additive values into
the Japanese economy over 6 weeks
Tickets are now available on open sale at https://tickets.rugbyworldcup.com – there remains good
availability for South Africa matches including South Africa vs. Namibia at Toyota (Sep 28) and
South Africa vs. Italy at Shizuoka (Oct 4) and tickets are on sale until 31 March – don’t miss out on
this once in a lifetime experience

The Rugby World Cup 2019 Trophy Tour

Rugby World Cup 2019 Trophy Tour will inspire new audiences and participants through a programme
of community, education and rugby activities
The Tour will visit 20 countries over two years, including five countries that have never hosted the
Webb Ellis Cup: Malaysia, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Chile
South Africa is the fourteenth stop
In Asia the Tour will support the dedicated IMPACT Beyond 2019 legacy programme which aims to
attract and retain 1 million new participants to the game

The tour will also excite and ready the global rugby family – fans, players, unions, media, stakeholders
– visiting both emerging and established markets across 5 continents ahead of Rugby World Cup 2019

The Tour has already visited England, Uruguay, Spain, Fiji, Hong Kong, China, the Philippines, India,
France, Nepal, Ireland, Malaysia and Germany as well as touring around Japan at key tournament
milestones
During 2019, the trophy will continue its tour, visiting the USA, Canada, Pakistan, Brazil, Chile and
Argentina ending in June when the Webb Ellis Cup arrives in Japan for the final countdown to the
tournament

Growing the Game in Asia

Project Asia 1 Million, part of the Impact Beyond programme which set a target of attracting one 1 new
rugby participants by 2020, with over 1 million new participants already, the focus is now on retaining
these players in the run up to Rugby World Cup 2019 and beyond
Asia continued to embrace the sport in 2017 with a total of 721,800 girls and boys taking part in the
Get Into Rugby programme in 2017
Asia Rugby boasted the highest number of Get Into Rugby participants of all the regions, with an 18
per cent increase on 2016

The Global Game

Rugby continues its unprecedented growth with 9.1 million men, women and children playing the sport
in World Rugby member unions worldwide in 2017
A record number of girls and boys were introduced to rugby in 2017, over two million girls and boys
participated in Get Into Rugby in 2017
A new Nielsen study has determined there are 338 million rugby fans worldwide
Awareness in rugby sevens tripled after the Olympics, with sevens experiencing a greater increase in
rugby sevens versus tennis, hockey and golf (Nielsen) and it has estimated that the sevens fan-base
grew by more than 30 million as a result
Rugby has the second-largest social media community of any Olympic IF (8.2million)

World Rugby

World Rugby is the global governing body for the sport of rugby worldwide and owner of Rugby
World Cup
With 120 national unions affiliated through six regional associations, World Rugby is responsible
for the development and growth of rugby worldwide, the guardians of its regulations and laws and
major international events, including Rugby World Cup, the World Rugby Sevens Series and
Women’s World Rugby Sevens Series, Pacific Nations Cup, Tbilisi Cup, Nations Cup, U20 World
Championship and several others
The Webb Ellis Cup
At the beginning of 1987, before the inaugural Rugby World Cup in Auckland and Sydney, the Webb
Ellis Cup stood in the vaults of the Royal Jewellers, Garrards in London
The Cup, made in 1906 by the Garrards silversmiths was a reproduction of a trophy believed to have
been made around 1740 by one of the leading artisans of the time, Paul de Lamerie, a Huguenot
silversmith
Made of sterling silver, gilded in gold, the Cup is adorned by a satyr head on one of the two cast scroll
handles, while the other is decorated with a nymph head. The decorative pieces include a bearded
mask, lion mask and vine
The Cup was selected by the Chairman of the 1987 RWC Organising Committee, John Kendall-
Carpenter and his colleague Bob Weighill, who was the Honorary Secretary of the International Rugby
Football Board
The craftsmanship of the Victorian period and the beauty of the trophy would become one of the
iconic symbols of sport
Rugby World Cup organizing committee decided that the Cup should be engraved ‘The Webb Ellis
Cup’ after the Victorian schoolboy William Webb Ellis who, legend has it, in a fine disregard for the
rules of football, picked up the ball and ran with it, thus creating the game of Rugby