The Irish Rugby Football Union has officially notified Rugby Europe of the withdrawal of their Senior Men’s Team for the 2025 Championship Series. Consequently, their Men’s team will not be present for either leg in Makarska and Hamburg.
Due to the very short notice before the start of the season, and after thoroughly assessing all possible options, it has been decided that the 2025 Men’s Senior Championship Series will be played with 11 teams, applying the provisions set out in article 5.8 of the Tournament Manual, 'No Show (Forfeit)'.
This will have the following implications for the RE Championship Series:
- For Makarska leg 1 on June 13-15, each team placed in the same pool as Ireland will be given a win by forfeit 28-0.
- The Ireland Men’s team will remain in the schedule as ranked #12. Match n°19, between the team ranked #9 and #12 following the pool phase, and Match n°29, for the 11th place ranking final, will be awarded a win by forfeit, with a score of 28–0.
- The Ireland Men’s team will be seeded 12th after the first leg and placed as A4 in Hamburg (June 27-29) where the same as above will apply.
- The match schedule for Makarska has been updated in consequence.
Furthermore, this will also affect the promotion/relegation principles for the 2025 season.
In order to come back to the usual number of 12 teams in the Championship and Trophy, it has been decided that
- Only one team from the Men 7s Championship (11th in the final ranking) will be relegated to Trophy;
- The first two teams in the Trophy Series cumulative ranking will be promoted to the Championship 2026 as set out in the Tournament Manual.
- Only one team from the Trophy will be relegated to Conference while two teams from the Conference will be promoted to Trophy, as already set out in the Tournament Manual.
- There will be no further impact on the promotion-relegation from Conference 1 to Conference 2.
These decisions were made in the best interests of the competition and aimed to minimise the impact.
