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rugby union has never been so popular. the world cup is touted as the third—biggest sporting event in the world. player salaries get ever larger, and the game expands into new territories, from georgia to china. and yet my guest today says the sport could be brought to its knees if ongoing tensions between the game's major stakeholders turn sour. rob andrew is a former england international, and last year he ended ten years as a top administrator at the rugby football union. what is his game plan for securing rugby's future? rob andrew, welcome to extra time.

thank you. one of the most eye—catching phrases in your book, rugby: the game of my life, is particularly doom—laden. you write, the non—alignment of interests and inherent conflicts at the heart of the two biggest rugby nations on this planet could easily bring the entire sport to its knees. why do you say that? well, it's an interesting point. and actually, just this last few days, with the southern hemisphere teams coming up to the north, and barbarians playing the all blacks, the southern hemisphere unions themselves and all three chief executives have come out and said there are real threats to the southern hemisphere game. lots of players leaving the southern hemisphere for the riches of the north, in england and in france. and there's a sort of danger that, over time, the rich clubs of france and england will hoover up all of the best players, put real pressures on the southern hemisphere. not only will they lose test players, but they will lose players from the level below, which means their own domestic games are damaged. and i think there is a real risk.

let me quote an example. in the euros, charles piutau has a £1 billion deal to play. you can't blame the player for wanting to earn money, you can't blame the owners for warning to attract the best talent. so how do you resolve this? and it goes to the very heart of what's happened in the last 20 years. and look, i was at the beginning of that, in 1995, when i went to newcastle with sirjohn hall. and we were criticised for paying exorbitant salaries then, of £50,000 per year. now, you have this issue in rugby where the game is split between union control and private ownership, which is a bit of a football model, and itjust creates loads and loads of tensions. and the model in football is that the club owners get more and more powerful. do you see the same happening in rugby union? undoubtedly, there's no question of that. it's probably only in england

and france that this happens, so we almost have a two—tier system in rugby. we have private club ownership in england and france, with significant amounts of money, significant wealth in owners, who are notjust millionaires now, but billionaires. there were millionaires when they came into the game, sirjohn hall and nigel wray. nigel and those guys are still there, and it just creates pressure. and when the athlete in the middle is wanted by two owners, effectively, then you have tension, and rugby has always had this tension. and a big part of my role, the reason i went to the rfu, was to try and control that tension, if you like, and create a working environment. but it's very difficult, and the more money that gets involved, the bigger those tensions become. how much do the club owners care about international rugby? well, i think deep down they still do. and i think, deep down... they don't act as if they do.

it's a really difficult challenge. and one of the big debates that's happening at the moment is around season structure, and length of season. and what the owners don't like, and to be honest, i didn't like very much when i was at newcastle with sirjohn hall, where your best player, we had jonny wilkinson, went missing for big parts of the season. and it's a bit like club football — man united and chelsea and spurs allowing, say, harry kane to go missing for three months of the season. and that is a challenge that rugby has to deal with in the next few years. but you take someone like piutau. he says, i could have stayed to be an all black great, but rugby is not forever. so he is choosing big money, quick money, for what could be quite a short career, whether he stays in northern england or not. you can't blame players. i mean, who would have thought... for all the pride of the all black jersey, which he now foregoes. and this is the issue. i'm not saying anybody is right or wrong.

but what i am saying is the market will dictate, the market forces, whether it's football, cricket now, with t20, rugby — the market will determine where the asset ends up. and not the pride of the jersey. well, not if you're talking about millions of pounds, which are life—changing. and this would clearly... in the amateur era, none of this ever happened. but i suppose it's one of the consequences of going professional. and did we all have a crystal ball in 1995, when it went professional? you couldn't see this coming? well, maybe we should have done. but even then, in 1995, remember, the premier league soccer had only been running since 1992. so the premier league soccer is only 25 years old, and could any of us have imagined it in english football, a £1 million rugby player, or ipl cricketers getting millions of pounds for six weeks? work? part of this is about

eligibility, isn't it? let's talk about nathan hughes. a fijian, eligible for new zealand, but switching to england, and is in eddiejones‘s squad, after three years here. so the question is whether three years is long enough for residency. why not make it five, why not make it never? yes, well, ithink that's another debate. that is one for the lawyers? it's one for the administrators. world rugby are looking at that at the moment. everyone accepts three years is too short. what do you think? three years is definitely too short. could be five, could be seven. seven — as many as seven years? i think, if you don't do something, it means that the islanders, in particular, who leave fiji, samoa, tonga, to go to new zealand or australia, it's notjust england, they're going to do it if the rules allow. you can't blame the player, can you? so you might say seven years?

residency is the minimum. does that have a cat's chance of coming through? i think maybe five years. but even — is five years enough? but again, the whole point here is that the game is turning on its axis. and actually, there are real financial and planning challenges that will have a longer—term impact, as we move through. and who's to say that, in time, the impact on the england national team won't be affected, as well? because, a bit like soccer, if all of the best players come to play in england or france, because we've got the biggest league... then they won't have the playing experience. so you're back into this catch—22 situation, and the debate in english soccer. winning the world cup for the under—17s or the under—20s — will those talented players get the opportunity? you write in your book, without compromises, the world cup model will be under threat. can you outline to me how this

compromise will be reached? maybe it is the five—year residency limit, other rules you would like to bring in? well, i think it is about the residency, but it's about how do you ensure that there's enough money going around to key players in the southern hemisphere. and that's one of the biggest challenges for south africa, australia and new zealand, is how do they keep enough talent at home to keep their games vibrant. so is it a fairer distribution of wealth amongst the nations? well, we've had those discussions. and those are difficult discussions to have, to say, will the big give to the poorer? the rfu is reporting that the new international laws are failing to reduce the number of so—called involvements, or collisions. 0n the contrary, these episodes are on the increase. what is to be done about player safety in rugby union? it has become a desperately brutal game. yes, but i think it has. i think there's a genuine belief amongst world rugby, and all the unions, to try and find a solution to something that —

once you go professional and you create these phenomenal athletes, and you turn the dial up as far as we have, the difficulty is turning it back down again. do you think it could even get hotter, as it were? well, i'm not sure how much hotter it could get, to be honest. but it's a challenge. and one of the biggest challenges is, as you say, the number of involvements. we talk about collisions in rugby. i mean, we never talked about collisions when i played. you talked about getting out of the way of collisions, not sort of having collisions. now, we talk about lots of hits and collisions, and it's sort of changed the way people think about the game. there is now talk of strike action by the players, in order to preserve, effectively, their careers, and maybe even their health in later life. is that something you would support? is that something that you might even engage in, if you were still playing?

i think, if i was a player, i would be certainly engaging in it, in terms of protecting... would you go on strike if you were? well, you would certainly question what's being proposed at the moment, in terms of the welfare of the individual. it's a very tough, long season. and this goes to the heart of the conflict between the union and the club. because the club owners want to stretch the season out, so that their players are playing for them more than they are for the union. and, if you're a player, you have only one course of action, which is actually to say, look, i'm not prepared to go on the field. and that's one of the biggest challenges. well, long—term consequences, of course, are immense here — brain damage. but there could one day, at the elite level, be a death on the pitch. i mean, i don't want to be scaremongering about this, but we know that at levels below the professional game there have been incidents like that. a 19—year—old, earlier this

year in new zealand, died as a result of injuries he sustained on the pitch. is that what it will take for rugby to come to its senses? for goodness‘s sake, we will pray and hope that that does not occur. and there's always been an element of risk in rugby. and sadly, i was involved at school with one of my best mates, who has been a paraplegic for nearly a0 years, who i dedicate the book to, called chris mckean, and rory and i were on the school field when he was injured in a tackle in the late ‘70s. and it's always the one thing that i sort of hate most about the game, if you like, that... it has obviously had a profound affect on you. it has. and chris is still alive, he's a remarkable human being, who has not got any malice towards the game. but, you know, he was 15 years old when this happened, and... so injury in rugby is something that's very close to my heart.

and i think it's a real issue for the game, that cannot be ta ken too lightly. and there's a danger, if things aren't — if something doesn't happen to turn down this dial, people will get put off playing rugby. and i don't want that, i don't want that at all. but you already hear on touchlines, with parents, mums in particular, and just sort of — do they really want their children to be playing rugby? and those things snowball. and what i've seen in sport, very quickly, over the last sort of decade, maybe slightly longer, is the pace of change in modern life, particularly when it's associated with sport, can happen like that. and, if you're not careful, you could be two, three, four, five years down the line — and there are bigger issues at play there.

a curious thing here, rob, is that the players want to play, of course they want to play, because they love the game, but also that they're reckless about the damage to their bodies, and some even relish the pain. a quote from one prop, dan coles — the pain bonds you as a team. from that, you get a deeper learning of each other, a deeper trust in each other. how do you react to that? yes, and i understand that. i understand that from dan. he was a front—row forward. i understood it when i played. there was a bond around the physical nature of the sport. i think there comes a point when the administrators of the game have a much wider responsibility, to protect the players from themselves, and to protect the long—term interests of the game, so that in 50 years? time, the game is still being played, and is still a sport of choice for young people. because it has so many qualities. but, as i say, there's an alarm going off here, and i think people are hearing it. and it's finding the answer that's always the damned difficult

thing to do. let's talk about your time at twickenham. you spoke about the 2012 world cup as a blip. what you are saying here is that you failed to employ any meaningful programme to ensure consistency in progress. that's one way of interpreting it, isn't it? some people would agree with you, and some people would say that, but i would disagree with that, and say... on what basis? well, i would say that when you look at systems, sporting systems, and there was not a great deal of system work back in english rugby in 2006, which is what i mean by that... and 2003 was that once every ten years england team. early ‘90s was the one before that. the 2011 and 2015 world cups were clearly very difficult. systems take years to build. and actually, when you talk to uk sport or any sporting organisation, there is a timeline to these things. the proof will be in the pudding over the next ten years. so what you're saying is if we win the world cup in tokyo in 2019, you are saying that it would be to your credit,

because you put the systems... no, i'm not saying that. but if you understand sport systems, you understand how long it takes to put these things into place. from 2008, you do need that time. that is not to say that in 2015 the team should not have done better, but over the next decade, given the quality of talent and the system that is in place in england, and the depth of talent, then england should do well, is my view. and i said that before the 2015 world cup and i stick with it. that doesn't mean to say that things won't go wrong with team selection or all the rest of it. well you're aware that there are critics of your time at twickenham. stephenjones especially, writing in the times, said it was disastrous reign in senior positions at twickenham. he pointed to four failed previous appointments, martin johnson, andy robinson,

brian ashton and stuart lancaster, and then, of course, and you have already referred to 2015, the world cup — it was an absolute disaster — the first home country not to qualify for the knockout phases. "if there was a car crash, then it was andrew that was sitting behind the wheel," writes stephen jones. yeah, well, stephen's got... he is a well—respected writer. he is a very well—respected writer. by some... but not by you! there you go. look, i think he has had an agenda for most of his career, as far as i'm concerned. an anti—andrew agenda? yes, no question about that. when i was a player and in my time at the rfu. you know, other people were involved, you know, in terms of the coaches, i was not involved in andy robertson's appointment. i did appoint brian ashton. this is the teflon rob andrew coming out, now, isn't it? not really. i think it is about understanding what people's roles are. and yeah, there was a misunderstanding of my role

at times at the rfu, and i said in the book, i made mistakes. there's no question of that. but i think most respected rugby journalists understand what was going on. um, stephen has his view. he has had for 30 years. whether i respect that view or not is up to me. well, some of the difficulties were obviously beyond your control, the moment in 2011, when manu tuilagi attracted the attention of the auckland police. look, it was a pretty tough world cup, again. things happened under martin's reign. players let him down. there is no question. senior players who he played let him down. they've got to look in the mirror and work out whether they did or they didn't. i know what their position was and i think martin does. and then obviously with the end of the world cup, going out to france in the quarter—final, we sat around having dinner in auckland, and the whole

of the management team — and they are pretty big management teams now, with rugby, possibly as many management teams as there are players — and that is the modern way, isn't it? and tom stokes, his phone rang, and, you know, he was sat next tojohn, and i was that virtually oppositejon, and hejust — you could hear him go, "yes, he's what? he's. . . ? and he's been arrested? erm, is he 0k?" and it was sort of — poor old tom, who had suffered through all sorts of things managing the team in that world cup, and we said "what on earth?" and it was toby flood who had rung tom stokes, who'd been with manu, and basically said "we were on a ferry on the way back to auckland harbour, and one minute manu's there, the next minute not — he was in the harbour. eventually, he was fished out, wasn't he? but the fact is that he has been in trouble here in the uk, once with the police,

and once with eddiejones, the head coach. is he a liability? is he worth it? how many chances to coaches give players? i think that is one of the issues. we have mentioned three incidents. three strikes and you're out, usually, isn't it? i think is one of those examples of the modern game, modern characters, the amount of money, the level of responsibility that you would expect place to take — not just in rugby, but other sports as well. we are in the modern world and the modern media, and, you know, players do have to take more responsibility. either that or coaches are effectively forced to lock people in their rooms. and wouldn't that be a crazy position? let's talk about eddiejones.

you were nearly at the end of your time at twickenham when he was appointed head coach. could you take credit for what appears to have been a successful decision, here? he's done well, hasn't he, jones? yeah, and i think that is the other thing i mentioned. how do you appoint coaches? do you have a recruitment process? do you have a nice panel with really experienced people like ian mcgeechan, richard hill, conor 0'shea, myself, ian ritchie, on the panel that appointed stuart lancaster, you know... who by no coincidence was was an englishman, wasn't he? it was all part of the point. at the time, it was felt that it was the right thing at the right time for english rugby. and again, stephen jones, get your facts right, i didn't appoint lancaster —

not that it means much to stephen, but nevermind. but it is one of those things where, you look at the eddie appointment, and the decision was taken that we have to have a coach with international experience. they will not be english, because you have just sacked the one with international experience. so the decision there which ian talk with the backing of the board, and ian and i did speak about it, was who was available at the moment. who has real experience and can come in and take a good group of players, and yes, there is talent here, but the key thing in 2015 was international experience. i will move you on, because we are running out of time. but any information on the 2023 world cup? looks like a shoe—in for south africa. ireland are very disappointed. these processes are very robust in terms of what you have to go through. ireland, france, and south africa, i suspect, have all put in strong bids.

how they come to the final decision is down to the recommendation of board. of course ireland will be hugely disappointed if they don't get it. but equally, south africa was a wonderful world cup in 1985, france was wonderful in 2007, and they would all do greatjobs. and so a final question, and a brief answer if you will. england for 2019 of the world cup, had you read their chances 1—ten, with 10 being winners? it is up there — the top end of that scale. there is no question about that. this is already a strong english group of players. two years to go. they will get better. and then it will be down to in those eight weeks, have they got their preparation right, and they got selection right,

can they handle the pressure, you know, which is what marks out the world cup winning teams. 2003 did it. ‘91 we didn't in the world cup final. this team is probably the nearest he would have had in two years‘ time that will have a real chance when they go to japan. thank you very much indeed. pleasure, thank you. good to meet you. hi there. for many of us, wednesday is going to dawn on a pretty grey and cloudy day.

competing weather stories, really, for wednesday. we've got a big ridge of high pressure keeping the weather quiet across much of the uk, however, a small area of low pressure has just trickled underneath the high and has brought us a lot of cloud across england, thick enough to bring us some outbreaks of patchy rain and drizzle particularly across eastern england first thing in the morning. elsewhere, a few fog patches up over high ground, notably across the higher parts of wales and south—west england so one way or another, for many of us, it's going to be quite a cloudy start but at the least this early morning patchy rain across eastern england will be clearing out of the way. so with a bit more detail, the morning forecast — a bit grey over the top of the brecon beacons, the moors of south—west england with some hill fog patches here. could have a bit of fog across the salisbury plain, perhaps a bit misty for the downs and chilterns first thing, otherwise this thick cloud bringing patchy outbreaks of rain for the first part of the morning. that rain will clear away pretty quickly. a few fog patches on the valleys

of northern ireland. some sunshine to scotland but it is cold, low enough for a touch of frost across sheltered northern areas. as we go on through the rest of wednesday, that rain should clear out but it will stay cloudy across the midlands and eastern england for most of the day. the weather brightens up for north—west england and wales with some sunny spells here but no doubt about it, the best of the sunshine will be across scotland, particularly eastern areas. rain, though, threatening the western isles as we go through the afternoon. through wednesday evening in overnight, rain becoming a bit more extensive across western areas. rather patchy nature nevertheless but nevertheless some damp weather pushes its way in. this is the cold front reaching scotland and northern ireland, bringing further heavier rain towards the end of the night. so turning we here. looking at the weather charts, this cold front will be sliding its way southwards, bringing a spell of heavy rain. lunchtime across northern england, heading into the midlands and across wales too.

to the south, a lot of cloud. behind the front, a big clearance. much more on the web sunshine moving into northern ireland, scotland and north of england. sunny, yes, but also colder. notice the single figure temperatures. for friday, many of us with a decent day, bright and sunny spells but a number of costly shower was affecting the far north of scotland. those showers could gather to give some lengthy spells a brain. this weekend, sunny spells around. showers across northern and western areas. at times, quite a chilly wind, particularly on saturday, the wind falling a bit lighter by sunday. and that's your latest weather. welcome to newsday, i'm babita sharma in london. the headlines: loud explosions are heard in the zimbabwean capital, where soldiers are reported to have ta ken over the headquarters of the state broadcaster. we're live in harare with the latest. australians say yes to same sex marriage.

more than 61% back the move in a nationwide survey. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore, also in the programme: french president emmanuel macron warns donald trump and vladimir putin are threatening western values. and the spice island swapped for manhattan, an indonesian outpost celebrates its history and bids for world heritage status. live from our studios in singapore and london,