Rugby world cup to be cut to 16 Teams

Blisterman

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/7015321.stm
There have been rumours of it circulating for a while, and now it's confirmed.
What are your opinions on this?
Personally, I think it's a bad idea. I think it's great, that small countries, like Japan and Georgia, get a chance to play against some of the best teams in the world, in a major tournament.

gosplan

So it's twelve seeds - 6 nations, tri-nations + Argentina, Samoa & Fiji..or something like that.

And then four more from qualifiers.

I really can't see any reason to do this. Where's the benifit? What will relegating teams to a second string tournament achieve for world rugby?

Think of what Gerogia running us close and then trashing the Namibians on such a huge stage will do for rugby in their country!!

marco_polo

Blisterman wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/7015321.stm
There have been rumours of it circulating for a while, and now it's confirmed.
What are your opinions on this?
Personally, I think it's a bad idea. I think it's great, that small countries, like Japan and Georgia, get a chance to play against some of the best teams in the world, in a major tournament.

This will be a real step backwards for the world game and if this is followed through on the shame on the IRB.

Erin Go Brath

I'd be against the proposal too. Rugby is a developing sport in many countries, this would be a retrograde step.

Marshy

Before the tournament I would've been in favour of this move. But the minnows generally speaking have been very competitive and a few of them have come very close to beating some of the top sides.

Poco Loco

gosplan wrote:

Think of what Gerogia running us close and then trashing the Namibians on such a huge stage will do for rugby in their country!!

I completely agree - a quote this morning from a Georgian player was that that result was the best thing that had happened in the history of rugby in their country - imagine if they had managed to beat us!!

Sangre

hardly confirmed yet. i think after how the 'minnows' have presented themselves this cup that it will be very hard to justify reducing it to 16.

LuckyLloyd

Most edicts from the IRB annoy me. For shame. :mad:

prospect

If it is cut to 16, and we keep playing on our current form, we will be lucky to be at the next world cup at all !!

justsomebloke

ye I would be against this as, well if for no other reason then I think one of the most enjoyable matches that I watched was Portugal V Romania the other night. Although the level of rugby might not have been great it was quite a close match and kept you watching till the end something that few of the other matches have

MGrah

jsb wrote:

ye I would be against this as, well if for no other reason then I think one of the most enjoyable matches that I watched was Portugal V Romania the other night. Although the level of rugby might not have been great it was quite a close match and kept you watching till the end something that few of the other matches have

So would you not like there to be more Portugal v Romania type games and less NZ v Portugal type games? (e.g. a second string tournament?)

As for what that result will do for rugby in Georgia, I'd say it will do less ( a lot less in fact) than Ireland beating Pakistan did for Cricket in Ireland. In other words nothing. There would just not be enough coverage in Georgia for it to make a significant difference, and non-rugby people would not understand the significance. Anyway, that match would still have gone ahead under the proposal, as Namibia would have been the team to miss out.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable idea to drop the number of teams to 20 because participation will be based on performance as it is at the moment. i.e. for this WC the 1/4 finalists from the last WC qualified automatically, this is going to be changed to the top 3 teams in each group (thank god). Allowing one team into each group from a second string competition is fine and if any team improves enough to make a breakthrough they will automatically qualify in place of the established team a la Argentina in '99 beating Ireland and us having to go through qualification for '03.

12 teams automatically qualifying would lead to a very competitive environment for a second string competition to qualify. Based on current form you would have the tri nations, 6 nations, Argentina, Fiji and Tonga qualifying automatically with the likes of Romania, Georgia, Samoa, Russia, US, Canada and Japan having a much more competitive tournament than the current regional ones. Dropping 4 more teams in would leave 2 of Italy, Scotland, Wales, Ireland etc in there every time, and would make the winning of the tournament uncompetitive.

justsomebloke

MGrah wrote:

So would you not like there to be more Portugal v Romania type games and less NZ v Portugal type games? (e.g. a second string tournament?)

but what are the chances of a tournament like this actually getting TV coverage as none of the home nations are in it chances are none of the TV channels would pick it up.

tHE vAGGABOND

I think winning 'world cup 2' will do more for rugby in portugal and other smaller nations, than playing well while loosing to Romainia or scoring a try while letting 20 in against the all blacks will ever do..

The top 4 teams from this world cup 2 tournament get into the world cup proper - so whats the problem? Its not like they get frozen out forever?

TBH I think at circa 2 months duration the tournament is far too long, bar the fact that we are rubbish there have been no upsets at all and plenty of one sided games with bonus points..

IMHO the tournament needs to be cut down..

tHE vAGGABOND

but what are the chances of a tournament like this actually getting TV coverage as none of the home nations are in it chances are none of the TV channels would pick it up.

But it will therefore be affordable, and on free to air TV in georgia and romania..and it will be...cos their nations have a chance of winning a game or two..

..and the whole point is that people in the developing countries get to watch it and it promotes the game there. Not the owner of Kileys in Donnybrook gets rich as he has it on his big screen in Dublin 4

marco_polo

The one benefit of cutting the number of teams down to 16 would be a reduction in the number of one sided games and hammerings dished out to the weaker teams.

I suppose it would be harsh on NZ, SA, AUS and and Argentina to exclude them from the cometition though.

Snickers Man

This only makes sense if there is a "secondary" competition for the smaller teams to play in. And there must be a formal and rigid means of progressing from one competition to the other.
EG the bottom four of the main competition have to play off some time over the next two years with the semifinalists from the weaker competition to qualify for the main one.
And why not run the lesser competition at the same time and in the same place as the main competition? That way you could fill some of the inevitable gaps in the schedule by having "Main tournament" Games on Friday to Sunday and "secondary tournament" games from Monday to Thursday without discriminating against the smaller teams by forcing them to play two or three games in a week as happens now.
If Ireland were to host a world cup in the future, in conjunction with somebody else, we could host two groups from a 16 team main tournament and one group from an 8 team secondary tournament.
The main matches could be hosted at the big stadia (Lansdowne, Croker, the new one being built in Belfast) The secondary ones could be hosted at places like Donnybrook, Thomond Park and somewhere in Cork.

It would provide a lot of exposure to the smaller countries, bring in the crowds and keep interest bubbling in the main comp.

moe_sizlak

makes sense to me , rugby is only taken serious in a handfull of countries anyway , since profesionalism took over , the weakers nations have struggled even more and among the governing body within rugby there is little appetite to try and change this

aidan24326

It would be a backwards step. While nobody wants to watch games like Australia 91 Japan 3, these teams will only improve if they're allowed to compete on the world stage. It's the only way they will attract the sort of coaching expertise needed for them to step up a level.

Look at the soccer world cup and how much better the African teams are performing now. 30 years ago 7-0 hammerings were the order of the day. Now the African teams are taken very seriously by everyone. This happened because they got in coaching expertise from Europe and got themselves organised properly. They would not have attracted that type of coaching had they been removed from world competition and consigned to some mickey mouse second-rate tournament.

Who knows in years to come we could see a new force emerge. Look how the Argies have progressed from being also-rans to the point where they're on the verge of topping their group ahead of Ireland and France, and that has happened in a relatively short space of time.

Sandeman

This depends where people want to see rugby going…if you want to keep it closed and restricted to an elite then this is a good decision, if you want to keep expanding the game to other parts, and bring in more future competition then it’s the wrong decision. Without incentives there will be no more Argentina’s in the future, in pre-2003 WC Italy was losing by bigger scores than Japan and Portugal, and now they win hoem and away games in the 6 Nations. Actually Italy used to loose to Romania and Portugal look at the improvements since they got a chance to play regularly with the big boys.
Also “tHE vAGGABOND” says “I think winning 'world cup 2' will do more for rugby in portugal and other smaller nations, than playing well while loosing to Romainia or scoring a try while letting 20 in against the all blacks will ever do..”. This is not the case, actually Portugal has won recently the 6 Nations B Tournament (not called that anymore) and for 5 years in a row was the Sevens European Champions..what did it do to increase the profile of the game there? Little or nothing, not even press coverage. Then they qualified for the World Cup, put on a brave display, scored a try every game and got 3 “Man of the Match”, the press coverage is huge, the sponsorship doubled for the Union, all 1st Div clubs got sponsors, new government funds, and the main clubs having more children joining in than ever. Of course results of this remain to be seen but no doubts there is no comparison.
Also “moe_sizlak” says that “it makes sense since rugby is only taken serious in a handfull of countries anyway”. This is not a fair comment I would nearly dare to say that rugby is probably taken more seriously in smaller countries, and this could not be a criteria to reduce the WC to 16. Georgia, Portugal, Romania, Namibia, Japan, etc might have lesser players and the game might not be huge there but they do take it seriously, so seriously that they are willing to sacrifice their personal lifes, jobs, careers, etc Maybe if some traditional rugby countries had taken the WC as seriously as some minor teams we wouldn’t have seen so many poor performances and surprises (or near surprises in some cases). Reducing the World Cup to 16 countries will not do anything to increase the profile of the game, to attract new supporters and sponsors, it will only suit a small group and please TV stations.

Eoin

I posted something similar in another thread about the same topic.

This is the current top 16 rankings from the IRB site:

1(1) NEW ZEALAND 93.38
2(2) AUSTRALIA 87.73
3(3) SOUTH AFRICA 86.44
4(4) ARGENTINA 84.82
5(5) FRANCE 84.63
6(6) IRELAND 79.62
7(7) ENGLAND 79.05
8(8) WALES 76.83
9(9) ITALY 75.65
10(10) SCOTLAND 74.95
11(11) FIJI 73.07
12(12) TONGA 72.56
13(13) SAMOA 70.66
14(14) CANADA 67.50
15(15) ROMANIA 66.51
16(16) GEORGIA 66.38

Not a huge amount of difference in points between the bottom few teams, and the ones ranked 17 - 20, so they're pretty interchangeable I imagine.

Would you not have to cut the tournament down to 12 teams before reducing the chance of spankings by the likes of NZ? Of course, Italy already got a bit of a pasting, and they're in the top 10 - should it be brought down to the top 8 then?

And as I also said in my other post - Portugal wanted to play New Zealand. It was a massive occasion for them.

I don't really buy into the argument of increased change of injury for amateur players. They won't be used to the big hits, but I don't think that makes it inherently dangerous. I'd be most worried about the scrum, which many referees simply have no clue how to referee because not many of them have played there - but the injuries are probably just as likely to happen playing countries of a similar standard.

Let the so-called minnows have some input into this. Surely they have a better idea of what's good for the development of their game.

MGrah

Sandeman, don't take this as an insult - maybe I am misreading you, but they're some pretty speedy responses to Portugal's performances at the world cup. Are you saying that in the space of the last 3/4 weeks the following has happened:
1. Press coverage of rugby in Portugal became "huge"
2. The Portuguese RU has managed to either attract an equal number of sponsors to the number they had before the World Cup, or re-negotiated their current deals to double the revenue
3. Every club in the Portuguese 1st division has found a new sponsor
4. The Portuguese government has dramatically increased the funding of the Union
5. Portuguese children are casting aside their soccer shirts for a gumshield and scrum cap

This is seriously hard to believe - do you have a source(s)? The point I'm making is that you hear things like this all the time about how minor successes bring on the sport in these countries, and yet I just don't believe that it's true, just like Cricket disappeared again here as soon as that WC was over, so will Rugby in Portugal.

On the point of Africa in the soccer World Cup, the European coaching idea is simply not true. African international soccer teams have improved for precisely the same reason that Argentina have improved in Rugby. Because their players have all gone to play for European clubs and learn their game there, the club game in Argentina I'm sure hasn't had anything like the improvement that the national game has, same for the African soccer club game.

The idea that's being put about by the IRB, afaik, is to have a 'second string' tournament a year before the WC. So for instance in 2010 this would take place, with qualifying teams and the bottom 2 teams from each 2007 WC group being included. The semi finalists of this tournament would then go on to play in the 2011 WC. This tournament would do a lot more for teams like Japan etc in terms of bringing them on than 90 point defeats at the WC. Plus they are not excluded by any means, those that are in the best position to take on the top teams go forward to the WC, where if they avoid finishing bottom of their group they by pass the qualifying tournament next time round. No one is suggesting having no 'weaker' countries in the competition, just reducing the number from 10 to 6, which makes total sense.

Worrytahs

If there was a way to run a top tier comp playing for 7 QF places with a concurrently run lower tier comp playing for the one remaining QF place I think that would be good.
This year's format is ridiculous. An average of 3 lower tier teams per group? Silly. Have a look through the scores. Way out of whack. It is also too overstretched as a result of these extra teams being involved.

The RFU (England rugby union) had the best proposal for RWC2007. Too bad that underhand canvassing for votes denied them of it.

moe_sizlak

globally , the rugby world cup gets relativeley low viewership , do you honestly think a 2nd tier world cup would attract enough of a tv audience to justify such a new competition
as regards african and weaker nations doing better now than they used to at the soccer world cup
you cant win by 20 goals in soccer like you can by 120 points in rugby
a route is much less frequent in soccer and a team like senegal can beat france or cameroon can beat argentina
a team like georgia can never beat new zealand at the rugby world cup

rugby gets a disproportionate amount of media exposure for the amount of participitation and followers the game has
this is not likely to change in the future , reducing the amount of teams would reduce the length of the tournament , this one is almost 6 weeks long , too long to maintan widerspread interest , the soccer world cup is only a full month

Worrytahs

moe_sizlak wrote:

globally , the rugby world cup gets relativeley low viewership , do you honestly think a 2nd tier world cup would attract enough of a tv audience to justify such a new competition

No more unjustified as screening rights of a Romania v USA game for example.

You've just touched on why the comp is so stretched ie. TV rights. Sponsors/prospective broadcasters are being a sold a product being much bigger than it actually is and Joe Soap supporter or player doesn't matter a stuff. The tournament has got to be chopped down. Its not even close to being a 20 team comp. The whole ethos of it should be a chance to 'compete' with the best. Not become bonus points fodder. Hence my suggestion of giving them a fair competition with something to play for ie. a place in the QFs of the top tier RWC.