Ireland was knocked out in the first round, leaving it a two-horse race between South Africa and France.

The chairman of World Rugby, Bill Beaumont, confirmed that France is the 2023 host nation.

“Just a short time ago the World Rugby Council cast their vote.

“The process was presided over by independent auditors by PriceWaterhouseCooper.

“It’s my great pleasure to announce that the host for the 2023 Rugby World Cup is France.”

Recently South Africa was named as the preferred bidder after a lengthy bidding process which started in 2013.

While the decision was seen as somewhat of a shock, Beaumont, believes that the whole process was as transparent has it has ever been.

“I think that we have been fortunate to have three great bids and two of the countries are going to be extremely disappointed.

“Obviously delighted for France. They’ve run a World Cup before, they have run events before and I think that it will be a really exciting tournament.

“It’s been a long process, and hopefully everybody feels that they have been involved in the process.

“It’s been a transparent process and we feel for the first time within World Rugby that we’ve actually put the results of our evaluation process out to the public so everybody been able to see what they felt and been able to comment on those as well.”

It will only be the second time that the event will be hosted in France with the first tournament in 2007.  South Africa hosted the tournament in 1995 and this tournament is widely regarded as the most iconic one to date.

On both occasions the Springboks were crowned the World Champions.

On Saturday France host the Springboks in Paris and Wednesday's outcome could add some spice to this Test match.

Morgan Piek OFM Sport