England's 2015 World Cup bid earns Brown's backing

Gordon Brown's government may have been credit-crunched to within an inch of its life, but it still believes it can find enough loose change to support an English bid for the 2015 World Cup.

After long discussions with Whitehall's mandarin set, the Rugby Football Union yesterday confirmed its interest in staging the event – Twickenham, Wembley and Old Trafford would be the principal venues, along with the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff – despite concerns over an £80m guarantee demanded by the tournament's custodians. Three rivals – Italy, Japan and South Africa – are expected to table competing bids later this month, but England start the race as clear favourites.

The Italians, struggling more badly as a rugby country than at any point since their Six Nations entry in 2000, are rank outsiders, while the Japanese are said to be more interested in hosting the 2019 competition.

The South Africans, who will stage the football equivalent next year, can make a strong argument on the facilities front and they have the advantage of operating in a Euro-friendly time zone, but a northern hemisphere option would generate more revenue for administrators who expect a sharp fall in profits from the 2011 tournament in New Zealand. A decision will be made in late July.

England last hosted the World Cup in 1991, dramatically increasing public interest in the sport. The RFU also made a bold pitch for the 2007 competition, but were trounced by France in the final vote. Francis Baron, the governing body's chief executive, has repeatedly expressed his alarm over the £80m guarantee, claiming it was "very hard to make the numbers work in the current economic climate". But after securing government backing, he believes he has minimised the chances of the RFU ending up out of pocket.

Meanwhile, the organisers of the European Challenge Cup – the second-tier event run for those clubs who fail to qualify for the Heineken Cup – yesterday defended their decision to hold this year's final at Gloucester, despite fierce protests from the French club Bourgoin. It will be the ninth successive final to be played in England, and the men from the Lyonnais were less than ecstatic at the prospect of playing Northampton at a venue so close to the Midlands. However, the European Rugby Cup chairman Jean-Pierre Lux gave his countrymen very short shrift.

"At no point in the three months since the end of the pool stage did anyone in France show interest in hosting this final," said the former Tricolore centre. "We even waited until after the quarter-finals, at a time when the people of Bourgoin knew they could play in the final. I thought they were going to wake up, but no one woke up and no one contacted us. The final will not change."

Harlequins expect their All Black outside-half Nick Evans to be fit for this weekend's Premiership semi-final with London Irish, who fear they will be without the Springbok prop Faan Rautenbach.