The 2019 Rugby World Cup will be the ninth Rugby World Cup. At a special meeting of the sport's governing body, the International Rugby Board (IRB; known as World Rugby from November 2014), held in Dublin on 28 July 2009, England and Japan were announced as the hosts for the 2015 and 2019 competitions, respectively. This will be the first time the tournament is to be held in Asia, the first time consecutive tournaments have been staged in the same hemisphere, and also the first time that the event will take place outside the traditional heartland of the sport. Hong Kong and Singapore had expressed interest in hosting some of the matches and were included as part of the JRFU's successful original hosting bid to the IRB but were not amongst the fourteen locations announced by organisers Japa