IRB chief says All Blacks 'replaceable' at World Cup

International Rugby Board (IRB) chief executive Mike Miller has responded to New Zealand's threat to withdraw from the 2015 World Cup by saying "everyone is replaceable". Steve Tew, the chief executive of the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU), said pulling the All Blacks from the next World Cup, in England, could not be ruled out as his organisation lost money every time the quadrennial tournament was staged. Tew said competing at the ongoing World Cup in New Zealand was costing the NZRU more than NZ$13 million ($10.3 million), casting a shadow over their participation in four years' time. But Miller, in an interview with New Zealand station Radio Sport, broadcast on Tuesday, when asked if the World Cup needed the All Blacks, arguably rugby union's most famous team and one of its most successful, replied: "It would be good for the All Blacks to be there. When the point was pursued, Miller said: "Everyone is replaceable." Turning to Tew, Miller added: "He's on the IRB Council, he's been involved in all of the decisions that we've made for the last five or six years, so he knows what's going on. "Of course he doesn't talk about the NZ$12m that the NZRU gets from the IRB over the four-year cycle. "We know what the issues are, which is why we had a conference on the Economics of the Game earlier this year, which Steve Tew was at. "The conference said after Rugby World Cup, we'd look at the outcomes and whether we'd need to change the model on the commercial rules, the distribution of funds, and on the timing of the World Cup." Tew said the bulk of the NZRU's NZ$13 million shortfall came from television revenues and gate receipts lost because the annual Tri-Nations competition was shortened in World Cup years so it did not clash with the tournament. "Why did they (South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) choose to truncate the Tri-Nations?," Miller said. "That's not the IRB's doing, that's what they decided to do. They lost money because of that." The IRB have long maintained World Cup revenues are their main way of funding the development of rugby worldwide and Miller said life was tough all round given the global economic recession. "I have huge sympathy for everyone. It's a very tough economic situation at the moment, all of the unions are suffering. We are looking at the issues." Tew's words were widely interpreted as a starting point for future talks with the IRB, with few believing the NZRU would disappoint their rugby-mad home public, and their players, by pulling out of the World Cup. "It'd be devastating for our country and our rugby players here as well," All Black hooker Keven Mealamu said last week. New Zealand, bidding to add a second World Cup title to the one they won when they staged the inaugural edition in 1987, face Argentina in the quarter-finals at Auckland's Eden Park on Sunday.