England and Wales in £10m match deal

England and Wales have struck a deal worth up to £10m to play two more matches immediately before the next World Cup.
The cooling of Anglo-Welsh relationships over the Joe Marler racist row has not prevented the RFU and the WRU from reaching a formal agreement over home and away fixtures in late summer 2019 before leaving for the tournament in Japan.
Full houses at Twickenham and Cardiff will generate around £8m in ticket revenue even from reduced prices. Television rights will be worth more than £2m, a bonanza which Wales missed last summer because they played themselves into the same World Cup pool as England.
That happened as a direct consequence of the Union's previous regime squeezing an extra international into an already crowded schedule, playing an out-of-window match against Australia as a money-making exercise.
Ironically, the WRU ended up paying a high price for losing to Australia in December 2012.
Whatever they made from a sub-60,000 gate was nothing compared to what they lost over a last-minute defeat that pushed Wales down to ninth in the global rankings just two days before the draw in London for last year's World Cup.
Instead of cashing in to the tune of £5m from a summer England double against their oldest rivals, Wales had to cut their losses by making do with the less commercially appealing matches against Ireland and Italy.
When England and Wales last met in World Cup warm-ups, before going to New Zealand in September 2011, Sky paid £2m for exclusive rights to matches of enduring box-office magic. The fans turned out in force for the two sell-out occasions – 80,945 at Twickenham followed by 72,898 in Cardiff seven days later.
They will do the same when normal pre-World Cup service is resumed at the earliest available opportunity.
“The one condition to the agreement is that both countries don't end up in the same World Cup pool as we did last time,'' a source told The Rugby Paper.  “Something would have to go seriously wrong for that to happen again.''
It means that by the time they leave for Japan, England and Wales will have played each other in eight official Test matches over a period of four years from September 2015.
The next of those, at Twickenham on May 29, is being billed as the only opportunity to see England before their three Tests in Australia. Their Grand Slam ought to ensure another full-house from a fixture arranged to help the RFU raise the £13m they have agreed to pay Premiership clubs as compensation for using their players at the World Cup.
The WRU, whose team will use the fixture as a warm-up for their three June Tests against the All Blacks, will be paid an appearance fee running to seven figures for what is billed as The Old Mutual Wealth Cup, perhaps   an appropriate trophy!
PETER JACKSON