IRB wants Japan to host all of 2019 World Cup

The International Rugby Board has told Japan it would prefer the country to host all 48 games of the 2019 World Cup.

Japan is pressing the IRB to consider Hong Kong and Singapore as flyway venues for a handful of matches in a bid to expand rugby across Asia.

However, top IRB officials said that Japan's proposal could prove problematic.

"It's difficult," IRB chief executive Mike Miller told Reuters after the board's first meetings with Japanese officials in Tokyo.

"We would prefer it to be in one country because then there is a huge focus. What we don't want is for people to be part of a World Cup in Japan and never play in Japan.

"They do not need to put matches abroad to make it successful. I don't think there's a worry about having 48 matches in Japan."

IRB chairman Bernard Lapasset stopped short of giving the Japan Rugby Football Union's initiative a ringing endorsement.

"We need to discuss it formally," he said.

"The concept is good. We have experience of hosting games in a different country in 1991, 1999 and 2007.

"But the issue that makes this decision different is that today we are dealing with countries without the experience those (Home Nations and French) unions had."

England won the right to stage the 2015 World Cup while Japan were named as Asia's first hosts for 2019 following the IRB vote in July. New Zealand host the next World Cup in 2011.