Melbourne, Dec 9 (IANS) Australia’s hope to bid for the 2018 or 2022 FIFA World Cups suffered a set-back with rules football and rugby bodies refusing to step aside to relinquish their ownership of stadiums.
Football Federation Australia (FFA) requires at least 12 stadia to host the 10-week tournament. But Australian Football League (AFL), which runs rules football, and the National Rugby League (NRL) are not ready to budge saying that relinquishing rights will hamper their leagues.

The Australian reported that AFL is refusing to let go its rights to Etihad Stadium, while the NRL is concerned not only at its loss of stadia around the country but the major disruption to its representative schedule and the free kick it would deliver a rival code in the battle for fans.

NRL chief executive David Gallop will meet FFA officials Friday but said under the current proposal it would be impossible to run a rugby league season around the World Cup’s demands.

“Some of the proposals are not going to be palatable to us and would be very costly to us,” Gallop was quoted as saying.

“We’re not trying to stop the World Cup bid but we are certainly concerned about the impact that it will have on our season, our fans and the financial position of our clubs.”

AFL boss Andrew Demetriou said that his organisation will not have the right to access 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground for up to 10 weeks if Australia won the right next year to host either of the World Cups.

But he declared Melbourne’s other major venue, Etihad Stadium, off-limits to the FFA.

World soccer’s governing body FIFA requires bidding nations to have 12 venues with a minimum capacity of 40,000.

The new rectangular stadium in Melbourne was initially planned as Melbourne’s second World Cup venue along with the MCG, before its capacity was capped at 31,000 and it became clear that the prospect of enlarging it was prohibitively expensive.