Nonsense.

French federation president Bernard Laporte has dismissed World Rugby’s 2023 report that recommended South Africa host the World Cup as “nonsense”, full of “blatant errors” and a result of “incompetence”.

On Tuesday the sport’s governing body recommended South Africa host the event in 2023, placing France in 2nd and Ireland in 3rd. South Africa received an overall score of 78.97 percent in the report to 75.88 for France and 72.25 for Ireland on a selection of weighted criteria.

Laporte says France have written to World Rugby, pointing out several “blatant errors.”

“We wrote to (World Rugby chairman) Bill Beaumont to point out several blatant errors,” Laporte told Reuters on Friday.

“I don’t believe in bad faith. I rather think that it’s incompetence.”

“How come we are less well marked than South Africa on hotels? They’re saying there are not enough hotel rooms in St Etienne. They hosted Euro 2016 matches, there are 1,500 rooms there. It’s nonsense,”

Laporte also said that the evaluation was carried out mostly by World Rugby employees and “not by two auditing firms as it was supposed to be.

We are not happy about that,” he said.

He says both Ireland and France are still in the running ahead of the council vote on November 15th, stating it’s not up to World Rugby at the end of the day.

“The match has not begun yet,” he said.

“And even Ireland are still in the competition. It is not up to World Rugby employees to decide who hosts the World Cup. It’s up to the federation presidents.”

The South African, French and Irish federations will not take part in the vote.