By Nick Purewal, Press Association Sport
Published: 00:47 GMT, 2 March 2019 | Updated: 00:47 GMT, 2 March 2019
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Top Pacific Islands stars will vote on whether to boycott the 2019 World Cup over World Rugby's controversial World League plans.
World Rugby is understood to be ready to omit Pacific Island nations Samoa, Tonga and Fiji from the 12-strong annual World League competition planned to launch as early as 2020.
The Six Nations Test teams and the Rugby Championship nations would be joined by Japan and the United States under World Rugby's latest considerations.
Pacific Islands stars will vote on a boycott 2019 World Cup over World League plans
Promotion and relegation has been mooted to hand tier-two nations like the Pacific Islands and Georgia the chance to step up, but the competition could also be ring-fenced for 12 years at a time.
Pressure group Pacific Rugby Players Welfare (PRPW) has pledged to canvass its 600-strong membership on whether Samoa, Tonga and Fiji should stage a World Cup walkout - something chief executive Dan Leo believes would jeopardise the entire competition in Japan this autumn.
If members vote in favour, Samoa, Tonga and Fiji could stage a World Cup walkout
'The World Cup would lose: I don't think the competition could go ahead if you took out a quarter of the players,' Leo told Press Association Sport.
'So that's the impact that we have. We don't have the commercial audience size that World Rugby wants to put into place for this competition, we don't have that.
'We are setting in place a vote of all our members over whether the Pacific Island nations should boycott this year's World Cup.
'We provide almost 20 per cent of all professional
