2023 RWC Buildup, Squads, Fixtures 'etc'

Tickets went on general sale for this WC last December so I don’t think the early draw does much for that. Package organisers will have their allocation well in advance and 10 months is more than enough time to sell those.

If you’re going to seed your draw - the whole point of which is to have a good chance of having your best teams at the business end of the competition - doing that so far out that teams can be completely overhauled makes the seeding almost pointless.

Other international tournaments have done draws 6/7 months ahead of the finals, rugby should be able to do the same.

If FIFA can make a draw 6 months out for the biggest competition in the world, World Rugby has no excuse. I get that it causes some issues for fans and teams organising camp locations etc, but it's the only way the draw is going to accurately reflect the position of teams. Especially if the World League goes ahead in 2026 and all the top teams have played each other. Do the draw in 2024, it's too far out. Do it in 2025, the Lions tour effects the amount of games some teams have played

Hmmm, you are way-off on 'tickets went on sale last December'. Surely it was way before that? According to our ticket thread here the initial FMT tickets and city packs went on general sale 15/03/21. That to me is the actual start-point of sales. Clearly it's ridiculously early compared to other sports, but that is what World Rugby/local organisers believe they have to do. Why are you so sure they are wrong.

What do you mean by 'other international tournaments have done the draw 6/7 months before hand?' Do you have a non-soccer example of a sport which is trying to sell out 30K-60K stadiums doing it in such a manner?

Cricket World Cup tickets only went on sale in August. I know that a lot of the games haven't exactly sold out, but a lot of that could be to do with the location

I took my 11 year old daughter to the stadium last night. First ever game. She was so excited and wide-eyed. Made everything else secondary. If you’ve got kids yourself you’ll know what I mean. We had 2 lads from Cork in front of us. They were wearing Argentinian scarves but were very magnanimous. Especially when I said the second daughter was born in Cork. Also saw a father and son wearing the Irish shirt and a kiwi lad taking a photo for them. The kiwis I spoke to said they really felt for the Irish, it would be nice if people forgot all the pettiness and just concentrated on the good things.

It will certainly be interesting to see how they handle the other team we outplayed. SA, if they make it to the final.

plenty will probably say the pool game meant nothing but SA wanted to win that as much as we did.

Outplayed Sa?think u need to look at match stats.

Best post on here in many‘s awhile. Sounds like a memorable one, swiwi.

I was at the QF, and I haven't posted much since then, but I feel like apologising to every kiwi I will ever meet again for what happened during the Haka.

And I knew months in advance that it would happen if we met ye in a QF. 9.00pm kick off, substantial number of bandwagoner Irish fans drinking all day, (some of which had never been at a single Irish match before. Guy behind me: "why is the ref pointing the opposite way to the way we're playing when he gives us a penalty, makes no sense") the Haka was always going to be ruined by a drunken rendition of fields of Athenry.

Leaving the result to one side, it was by far the least I ever enjoyed a match thanks to the "fans" in my immediate vacinity.

Cringe doesn't even begin to cover it.

Anyhoo, I'm sure that's been done to death already. I just haven't been reading any of the 74 threads devoted to why we lost an epic game to a NZ team that got everything right on the day and deserved to win.

I'll be at the final next week, and would rather see NZ win now. So I'll applaud (not shout though, can't bring myself to do that) on your behalf swiwi 😊

Yip ok just proves my point about Irish fans.anyway where’s Ireland now and where’s Sa now.