I want to make two things clear at the outset:

1. I don’t think anyone who actually reads the 139-page evaluation report can doubt World Rugby’s good intentions.

This was a genuine attempt to create a robust method for choosing the right host for a competition that has become vital to the sport’s continuing international development.

2. I have spent long enough in South Africa to be very well aware of that wonderful country’s considerable hosting assets.

I was lucky enough to attend the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which, while not without its problems, was atmospheric and pretty well-handled.

The outstanding – and costly - venues built for that tournament are, of course, still there and crying out for new events to help justify their existence.

For that reason alone, it seems justifiable to conclude that staging the Rugby World Cup in six years’ time would be significantly less demanding for the nation of the Springboks than putting on its football counterpart seven years ago.

However, I have also formed the opinion that in two respects those who designed the process got things wrong.

One issue relates to the structure of the process itself; the other to the weightings via which the three competing bidders – France, Ireland and South Africa – were graded.

Both have, I think, contributed, along with the natural disappointment of the French and Irish bid teams, to the kerfuffle that has followed the announcement that South Africa is the recommended candidate.

My first issue relates to the two-tiered nature of the selection process: an evaluation report followed, some two weeks later, by a vote in council.

There is nothing unique about this: the International Olympic Committee (IOC), for years, used a similar process.

One key difference though is that the IOC’s evaluations tended to confine themselves to passing judgement on whether the relevant Candidate Cities were capable of staging a good event.

The RWC 2023 evaluation report also does this: it states specifically that “any of the three candidates could host a successful Rugby World Cup”.

But it also grades the competing bids – to two decimal places.

And, as we have seen, it concludes with the recommendation “of the RWCL Board of Directors to World Rugby Council” that South Africa should be awarded the right to host the 2023 competition.

This RWCL Board of Directors consists of five people: Bill Beaumont, World Rugby chairman; Agustín Pichot, vice-chairman; Gareth Davies, a World Rugby Council member from Wales; Mike Hawker, an independent member; and Brett Gosper, World Rugby chief executive.

Now put yourself in the shoes of a World Rugby Council member from a neutral country/region, who has played no part in the evaluation report other than reading it, but who has formed the honest conclusion that Ireland or France would be the better choice to stage the tournament. 

Cast your vote accordingly and you do so in knowledge not only that you are going against the recommendation of the World Rugby top brass, but that, if your preferred candidate wins, the whole evaluation process will probably be called into question.

It seems to me that once it was decided that the evaluation report would allot specific scores to bidders, it would have been better either to dispense with the council vote or, preferably, to make sure there was no overlap between those articulating the evaluation report’s recommendation and the leadership/electorate.

(It is worth stating here that while Beaumont, as chairman, does not have a vote like most other council members, if the ballot is drawn, he may choose either to exercise his casting vote or to order another ballot.)

As it is, the impression risks being created, I think inadvertently, either that the leadership is seeking to reduce the council to a rubber stamp or, if South Africa does not now prevail, that the leadership is weak.

If you are going to grade bidders with this degree of exactness, it is also advisable to make sure that the grading process is beyond reproach.

Having worked through the weightings applied to the different criteria by which the bids were judged, there was one aspect which I found extremely surprising.

This was the weighting applied to each bid’s ability to demonstrate that the 2023 competition would take place “in a secure political and economic environment”.

Especially having witnessed the impact that Brazil’s economic woes had on Rio 2016, I would have thought this was of fundamental importance.

Yet of the 35 per cent of each bid’s possible score assigned to “finance commercial and commitments”, only one-tenth of the weighting was given to this key ingredient of a competition’s success.

By my calculations, this means that only 3.5 per cent of each candidate’s overall mark hinged on this element of “a secure political and economic environment”.

I should come clean at this point and say that when I first read the report, my at-a-distance impression was that the risk of both political and economic turbulence in South Africa in the next six years was rather high.

Once I realised I was likely to make something of an issue of this subject, however, I thought it prudent – and only fair – to double-check. So I consulted an expert, and long-time Johannesburg resident, whose views I trust. This was the key part of the response I got:

“I understand why there might be questions about South Africa’s political and economic stability for the 2023 World Cup, but…I think those concerns are overblown.

“Yes, the political situation today is less stable than it was in the lead-up to the 2010 World Cup, and the economy is somewhat weaker, but I don’t think those issues are significant enough to affect the Rugby World Cup.” 

All admirably clear and succinct, as I had expected.

On this basis, I formed the view that the evaluation report’s award of two marks out of four to South Africa on this criterion, against three for both France and Ireland, was fair and reasonable, insofar as any of us can judge six years out.

There remained, though, the issue of the weighting.

You could say that, by the evaluation report’s own assessment, France and Ireland were each judged 50 per cent more economically and politically secure than South Africa (since three is 50 per cent more than two).

Ultimately, however, this contributed just 2.625 percentage points to France and Ireland’s final tallies of 75.88 per cent and 72.25 per cent respectively.

Put another way, South Africa, which scored 78.97 per cent overall, lost only 0.875 percentage points compared with its rivals for being adjudged to have a significantly less secure political and economic outlook than either of them.

Put yet another way, South Africa could have had so alarming a political and economic outlook that it scored zero in the category and it would still have notched up a higher overall total – 77.22 per cent - than its two rivals.

Compare this with the impact on the overall result of the candidates’ scores in the category relating to the tournament fee that is payable.

Ireland promised the minimum £120 million, paid by Government; but South Africa scored highly by promising £160 million.

Because of the high weighting accorded to this area of the bidding - three times as high as that designated for economic and political security - South Africa’s promise accounted for no fewer than 10.5 percentage points of its overall total; Ireland scored 6.5625 percentage points for its pledge.

By the simple act of matching South Africa’s tournament fee promise, the Emerald Isle could hence have wiped out more than half of its overall deficit of 6.72 percentage points.

When I raised the low weighting accorded to economic and political security with World Rugby, I was told that “all aspects of the assessment model and process were agreed well in advance by all Council members, including the candidate unions”.

This is no doubt helpful when it comes to rebutting any questions now raised by the candidate nations themselves – but it doesn’t make the judgement sensible or right.