'Box office' World Club Cup will pit Super Rugby against the best teams from the north
The long-running debate as to whether Super Rugby is stronger than the United Rugby Championship (URC) or the English and French leagues will finally be decided on the field, with the exciting announcement of a World Club Cup.
The four-yearly event will kick off in 2028 and will be run by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), the organisers of the URC and the Champions and Challenge Cups.
In Cardiff at the weekend, where the Champions and Challenge Cup finals were won by Bordeaux and Bath respectively, EPCR chairman Dominic McKay confirmed that the Rugby World Club Cup has been signed off by all unions and both hemispheres.
McKay said, 'It promises to be box office.'
Sixteen teams will qualify – eight from the Champions Cup, seven from Super Rugby, and one from Japan.
The tournament, which will feature the world's very best clubs and superstar players, will launch in June 2028, elevating the Champions Cup knock-out rounds to the Rugby World Club Cup and supercharging the closing stages of the EPCR Challenge Cup.
'To elevate the whole of professional club rugby, we want to create this World Club Cup in 2028 and 2032 with our friends from the South,' McKay explained. 'We have these incredible competitions that we own and operate, and we want to find a way to elevate them further and bring in teams from Australia, New Zealand, and Japan – and we'll do that through the World Club Cup.
'So, once every four years, starting in 2028, we're going to bring the greatest clubs from the southern hemisphere to battle it out against the greatest clubs in the northern hemisphere – and who wouldn't want to find out who the greatest club in the world is as a consequence of that?'
As McKay says, it will be box office to have the likes of the Crusaders, Hurricanes, Blues, Queensland Reds and the Waratahs up against teams such as Toulouse, Bordeaux, Bath, Northampton, the Bulls, Sharks, and Stormers.
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