Crusaders to play Munster in early 2024

Rugby’s renewed appetite to shake up the fixtures calendar will continue next year with the Crusaders, the recently crowned Super Rugby champions, set to play Munster, the current URC title holders, in a friendly in Ireland that will whet the appetite of fans longing for a world club championship.

The ‘Club World Cup’ idea has long been the subject of speculation, an ambition fuelled by regular comments from administrators such as URC CEO Martin Anayi. It was last September, ahead of the start of the 2022/23 season, when he spoke about the prospect of the club hemispheres uniting for a global quadrennial tournament.

“I like the idea of creating big events,” he said at the time, following on from previous comments where he stated: “What we realise is if we could take the Champions Cup weekends in any fourth year and then put the top eight sides from the north versus the top eight sides from the south, then you have got something that can work over a four, five-weekend period.”

It has been reported that the concept of a 16-team tournament has been agreed upon in principle and that discussions between the URC and European leagues are said to be at an advanced stage.

This plan would see eight northern hemisphere clubs and seven from the southern hemisphere, plus a Japanese side, to be placed in four pools, each playing two matches against teams from the other hemisphere to determine the four semi-finalists.

Expectations are that the competition, which would take place instead of the knockout rounds of the Champions Cup, would happen once every four years, and could potentially start in 2025 ahead of the British and Lions tour to Australia.

In the meantime, as a way of testing the water regarding the fan appeal of seeing Super Rugby Pacific sides playing in Europe, RugbyPass has learned that the Crusaders will embark on a two-game pre-season trip in February 2024 that will include a match against Munster in Limerick.

If that idea comes to pass, it would mean a return to Thomond Park for new Crusaders boss Rob Penney, who spent two years as head coach at the Irish province from 2012 to 2014. The current Japan U20s boss was recently named as the head coach successor at the Crusaders to Scott Roberston, who is moving on to take over the All Blacks after the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France.

Robertson signed off his tenure in charge by leading the Crusaders to a seventh successive Super Rugby title with last Saturday’s win over the Chiefs in Hamilton.

The Crusaders last played in Europe in March 2011 when Twickenham in London played host to a 35,000 attendance for a Super Rugby match versus Sharks. It is also believed that the Crusaders will play Bristol as the second game on their 2024 tour.