Celts ready to take on world

Wales and Scotland have welcomed the Rugby Football Union's compromise decision to include them in their revised 2007 World Cup bid.

The offer to add Cardiff 's Millennium Stadium and Murrayfield in Edinburgh to a heavyweight new-look lineup of prospective venues, which now also includes yet-to-be-rebuilt Wembley and Leicester City's Walkers Stadium, is at the heart of England's strategy to defeat rivals France.

It is hoped that money, however, is the real trump card.

RFU chief executive Francis Baron has pledged that revenue from the 2007 tournament would be "in excess of 50 per cent more than what France would generate" - a statement which means that estimates of surplus could be as high as £200 million.

The combined drawing power of the new 90,000-seater Wembley, which has been promised four matches including a semi-final, Twickenham (by then to have 82,000 seats), the Millennium Stadium (75,000), Murrayfield (67,500) and Old Trafford (68,000) means that the RFU can now expect around 1.9 million paying customers for their preferred bid option of a 40-match World Cup and a trimmed 48-match second tier World Nations Cup, which would run concurrently.

An increase of at least 25 per cent of revenue, compared to their original bid in October, is the net result of England's clever rethink following the International Rugby Board's instruction to both themselves and France to consult member countries and produce revised plans.

The RFU expect details of the revised French bid to be made public within a fortnight, and the IRB are to vote on the two resubmitted bids in April.

England deny horse-trading and insist they have held out for an event managed by a single country, saying that neither Wales nor Scotland will be given home group matches - and stressing that both the Millennium Stadium and Murrayfield are merely to be leased.