Reuters | Tuesday, 27 November 2007

Argentina's future in international rugby will be discussed during an unprecedented IRB series of workshops in England this week.

For the Pumas to build on their third place at the World Cup, however, the Argentine Rugby Union (UAR) must also submit their draft plan for sustained success this week, a senior IRB official said.

"Argentina's position in international competitions will come up in the workshops," Mark Egan, the IRB's head of Rugby Services, told Reuters.

"But it won't be a case of Argentina giving the forum a presentation and demanding that they be included in X,Y and Z competitions," Egan said in an interview.

Egan said recent reports out of Argentina had given the misguided impression that the Integrated Season Forum workshops, involving the whole international rugby community, were the scene for Argentina to present their long-delayed plan.

This was due in part to the November 30 IRB deadline for the draft coinciding with the three-day workshop starting on Tuesday.

The IRB has been withholding from Argentina for more than two years a huge fund of £2.25 million, to be delivered over a period of three years, because the UAR, an amateur organisation fearful of change, has dallied over the draft.

Egan said that playing in a top international competition, something long overdue for Argentina, cannot come without a complete restructuring of the UAR along professional lines.

Otherwise Argentina risk a hard struggle to maintain a standard of rugby that has reached the top echelons of the game thanks to a brilliant generation of players despite the amateur set-up at home.

Egan pointed out that the IRB does not advocate an end to the amateur club structure but rather building on its grass-roots virtues.

Negotiations over Argentina's insertion in the Six Nations, to whom the UAR recently sent a formal request for inclusion, or Tri-Nations is something the IRB cannot directly influence but it wants to fund the infrastructure that would make the Pumas viable participants in either of these competitions or a proposed World Series.

"We must have agreed outcomes for this money... which we believed we had already agreed two years ago," Egan said.

"Once the outcomes are agreed and a comprehensive strategic plan for the union is in place, then the IRB executive committee will consider how the funding should be released.

"The new regime (of Alejandro Risler which came in at the end of 2005) didn't agree with the original high performance plans that had taken nearly six months to prepare," Egan said.

"They felt that they were entitled to the funding without any strings attached and that they should be allowed to spend it as they see fit."

"This was unacceptable to the IRB executive committee and everything went back to square one."