World Cup Format Rethink

[MarkyH]

Bring back the Churchill Cup!

That's the answer, from an England perspective anyway.

Firstly, I'd keep the WC how it is, it's a special event.

England first team will tour in a summer, playing at least 3 games, apart from a WC year, and the Lions year we tour Argentina with a Saxons type squad anyway. So the other years out of a WC Cycle we play a Saxons Americas Tour, then a Pacific/Japan tour and maybe a Asia/Africa tour. These will coincide with the first teams tours of SA, NZ and Aus.

Quite a selfish view, as this benefits England as well as the nations we play, but it will benefit them. These tours can also include a Wolfhounds, Wales A etc etc. For example the Americas tour can be Saxons, Wolfhounds, USA, Canada. Maybe USA, Canada, Uruguay and Brazil can have a qualifying tournament to see which 2 teams join the Saxons tournament. The next year a PI tour of Saxons, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa.

Good experience for a usually younger Saxons team, and they are more than strong enough to give the oppositions in these areas good games.

These tier 2/3 teams should improve and be more ready for a WC format that hasn't changed

 

[TRF_heineken]

To be honest I think more games and tours should be made for the Tier 1 teamsf "A" sides or barbarian sides or whatever secondary team the country has. Like South Africa has an "A" team and they usually only play during the B&I Lions tour to SA, and once in a blue moon go on a tour of their own.

But there isn't a consistent effort in making matches available to them.

But we are digressing a bit from the topic at hand...

 

[RedruthRFC]

Fair enough. But the number of international teams playing professional football and rugby are miles apart. How can we expect WR to expand the WC now when the other teams we want to include are worse than the minnows playing in this world cup? Not only will the quality of rugby be poor, there will be more matches with runaway scores.

As you are now starting to articulate, it's a problem of quality, not quantity - there are plenty enough teams playing test rugby, but not to a level that warrants inclusion in a World Cup.

 

[die_mole]

Fair enough. But the number of international teams playing professional football and rugby are miles apart. How can we expect WR to expand the WC now when the other teams we want to include are worse than the minnows playing in this world cup? Not only will the quality of rugby be poor, there will be more matches with runaway scores.

I feel like expansion to 24 wouldn't include any teams that are worse than Namibia/Canada. It would most likely be Spain, Romania, Hong Kong, and one other.

 

[Goodey]

Hong Kong are ranked below Canada and lost to them comfortably in the repechage.

If we keep it at 20 we would actually improve the standard by bringing in Romania and Spain.

 

[TRF_heineken]

Hong Kong are ranked below Canada and lost to them comfortably in the repechage.

If we keep it at 20 we would actually improve the standard by bringing in Romania and Spain.

They would have been there had it not been for that unfortunate situation of match fixing...

 

[Brigantine]

match fixing

Did I miss something? I thought it was all about using ineligible players and assaulting the ref

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

Don't like the 20 team format, mostly because of uneven scheduling. The entire concept of a 4 day turnaround in this day and age is ridiculous, it's horribly unfair on the players, especially when you consider that after the group stage, loads of them are going to be playing some of the biggest games of their lives. The necessary rest levels just aren't there.

Will freely admit that I don't have a solution, not really a fan of the 24 team formats either..

This is the entire reason to go to 24 teams with a group of 16. Spain, Brazil, Romania are no worse than Canada or Namibia.

Btw, it wasn't match fixing. They fielded ineligible players. 2 in the case of Spain, 1 in the case of Romania. Who btw, was confirmed by the Tongan Rugby Union as being G2G.

4 day turnarounds for non six-nation/rugby championship sides is ridiculous. There isn't the depth. The schedule and bonus point system is structured to make it extremely unlikely for second tier sides to cause upsets. It makes for a very uninteresting tournament.

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

They would have been there had it not been for that unfortunate situation of match fixing...

Wasn't match fixing.

That's the answer, from an England perspective anyway.

Firstly, I'd keep the WC how it is, it's a special event.

England first team will tour in a summer, playing at least 3 games, apart from a WC year, and the Lions year we tour Argentina with a Saxons type squad anyway. So the other years out of a WC Cycle we play a Saxons Americas Tour, then a Pacific/Japan tour and maybe a Asia/Africa tour. These will coincide with the first teams tours of SA, NZ and Aus.

Quite a selfish view, as this benefits England as well as the nations we play, but it will benefit them. These tours can also include a Wolfhounds, Wales A etc etc. For example the Americas tour can be Saxons, Wolfhounds, USA, Canada. Maybe USA, Canada, Uruguay and Brazil can have a qualifying tournament to see which 2 teams join the Saxons tournament. The next year a PI tour of Saxons, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa.

Good experience for a usually younger Saxons team, and they are more than strong enough to give the oppositions in these areas good games.

These tier 2/3 teams should improve and be more ready for a WC format that hasn't changed

Sorry friend but no self respecting fan of Canada/USA wants to see Canada play the England Saxons. It's this sort of thinking that has Rugby on its knees in Canada with professional Rugby League drawing 10k+ fans in Toronto.

I would much rather see Canada, USA, Japan, Argentina, etc tell 6N+3N+WR to buzz off and we play our own tournaments against one and other. Hopefully once MLR builds momentum we will have no need for handouts anymore.

 

[TRF_heineken]

Did I miss something? I thought it was all about using ineligible players and assaulting the ref

Yeah yeah, it was that what you said. I just used the term match fixing as it's shorter to type on my phone... Sorry

 

[miccloarch]

Wasn't match fixing.

Not to cause a stir but the "ineligible players" charge was nonsense. World Rugby even gave Spain a rematch but then later reneged. Just ask yourself how it's possible only Spain, Romania and Belgium - the very teams involved in the fixed game - are the only ones to field ineligible players during qualifying.

Sorry friend but no self respecting fan of Canada/USA wants to see Canada play the England Saxons. It's this sort of thinking that has Rugby on its knees in Canada with professional Rugby League drawing 10k+ fans in Toronto.

I would much rather see Canada, USA, Japan, Argentina, etc tell 6N+3N+WR to buzz off and we play our own tournaments against one and other. Hopefully once MLR builds momentum we will have no need for handouts anymore.

I'm with you here, and the 24 team format, but a lot has to happen in between World Cups for that to be viable. Like the NH and SH tier 1 unions letting go of their power struggle a bit and actually supporting tier 2 nations instead of just paying lip service like always.

 

[Brigantine]

a supercharged repechage qualification tournament before the RWC, with 3 - 7 qualification spots and a plate for winning the tournament. It would work best if you reduced the main RWC tournament to 4 pools of 4. (maybe even 2 pools of 6)
E.g. 16 team RWC, 5 or 7 of which qualify through a 12 team repechage tournament. (maybe including 2 Six Nations teams and a Rugby Championship team)
3 pools of 4, then top 4 play off for the Plate, next 4 play off for qualification. (23 or 21 teams involved in either RWC or Plate/qualification comp)
This would still be difficult to organize. 5 games each the year before the RWC, even if it is replacing a few current qualification and repechage games. Also it wouldn't be so great for Scotland/France/Argentina/whoever if T1 are included.

Small revision - a qualification tournament can fit into 4 rounds during the AIs.

Take the Pacific Nations Cup format with 2 pools of 3, each team plays each of the 3 teams in the *other* pool. Then a table of all 6 teams results.
So run that format with 2 pools in group X and 2 pools in group Y. (12 teams total). In the 4th round have a final X1 v Y1, and qualification play-offs X2 v Y6, X3 v Y5, X4 v Y4, X5 v Y3, X6 v Y2.
(or X2 v Y2 bronze final + qualification X3 v Y6 etc. for 8 berths filled, or adjusted to suit)

Example:

Group X
Fiji / Tonga / USA vs Italy / Namibia / Hong Kong

Group Y
Japan / Samoa / Uruguay vs Georgia / Romania / Spain

Final - Fiji vs Japan

Qualification play-offs:
Italy vs Romania
Tonga vs Uruguay
USA vs Spain
Namibia vs Samoa
Hong Kong vs Georgia

 

[Canadian_Rugger]

Small revision - a qualification tournament can fit into 4 rounds during the AIs.

Take the Pacific Nations Cup format with 2 pools of 3, each team plays each of the 3 teams in the *other* pool. Then a table of all 6 teams results.
So run that format with 2 pools in group X and 2 pools in group Y. (12 teams total). In the 4th round have a final X1 v Y1, and qualification play-offs X2 v Y6, X3 v Y5, X4 v Y4, X5 v Y3, X6 v Y2.
(or X2 v Y2 bronze final + qualification X3 v Y6 etc. for 8 berths filled, or adjusted to suit)

Example:

Group X
Fiji / Tonga / USA vs Italy / Namibia / Hong Kong

Group Y
Japan / Samoa / Uruguay vs Georgia / Romania / Spain

Final - Fiji vs Japan

Qualification play-offs:
Italy vs Romania
Tonga vs Uruguay
USA vs Spain
Namibia vs Samoa
Hong Kong vs Georgia

I've thought about a sixteen team tournament over the past few weeks and think it could be a better option than expanding the tournament further to 24 teams on one condition:

World Rugby institute a massive overhaul of the qualification process for the tournament and stop giving freebies to certain nations, including the very top of the sport. Back in 1999 until circa RWC 2003, the qualification process was actually way better. In 1999, you had 4 automatic qualifiers with 63 teams vying for 16 qualifying spots. At the time, Rugby actually had a qualification process similar to FIFA with regional qualifications. The only four qualifiers were France, NZ, SA & Wales as hosts with England being forced to undergo the "indignity" of a qualification process in Europe.

Ironically, Rugby is more popular now but the opportunity for qualifications has essentially dried up and the game has become one gigantic closed shop. The Pacific Islands are basically given a free pass to all qualify, even though their Unions are gigantic disasters as are the North Americans (including my Canada) even though we really don't deserve it.

I think a 16 team tournament would be great if we went back to a robust qualification process that also forced the major teams to play smaller nations in between RWCs.

 

[Brigantine]

nah, it's better to arrange competitive or competitive-ish tests, than to use those fixtures for completely one-sided RWC qualifying matches constrained by continental association boundaries.

Samoa and Canada had to go through repechage to qualify, and they still qualified. pretty much vindicates the current qualification system. The only team that benefits from the current system is Namibia, because they have practically no competition in Africa.

I think a big inter-continental repechage tournament is the most "robust qualification process" you can have, so in that sense we're kind of saying the same thing.

 

[Goodey]

I'd like a bigger, properly televised repechage, yeah. WR needs more good tournaments of its own, it has no power over the really popular ones.

The easiest way to improve the world cup is holding the draw closer to the finals, though. That'd be a good start