Rugby Europe Championship has had a weird change of format this year - it was a biannual round robin (which was also weird, don't get me wrong), but now it's an annual knock-out tournament with two 4-team pools leading to semi-finals and a final. Potentially a more sensible format and a possible model for the 6N to use if they ever choose to expand, but the increased number of teams and the decision on the order of fixtures has led to Netherlands and Switzerland getting taken without lubrication for two weeks in a row by Georgia and Spain (Georgia 110 : 0 Netherlands being a particular lowlight) and to Belgium and Germany getting pumped by Romania and Portugal for two weeks in a row (Belgium scoring the best result of the minnows in having the only game where the winner didn't get a try bonus point - Romania will be very upset). As such, REC 2015 knows its semi-finalists even before the final round and, as such, knows its 4 qualifiers for the expanded RWC 2027.
That is, of course, until Spain get disqualified for fielding an ineligble player, as is their consistent hobby.
Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Holland will play knockout games of their own to see who comes fifth and goes into the repechage for the final RWC place.
Puja
RWC 2027 Qualifying
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Puja
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Re: RWC 2027 Qualifying
Not to come over all Rowan, but I got interested in what minnows could be turning up at 2027, so I looked into the qualification for the other regions.
Rugby Africa gets one guaranteed place and one play-off spot to get into the repechage (playing against Asia 2). They had a knockout tournament last November to set rankings for a round-robin tournament this year - ordinarily you'd expect Nambia vs Kenya to be the final with the expectation that they'd end up being Africa 1 and 2 respectively, but both of them went out in the semi finals to Zimbabwe and Algeria (with Zimbabwe comfortably winning top-seeding). Whether that's a shift in power in the continent, or just one-offs in a knockout and normal service will be restored in the round robin, I don't know.
Asia Rugby get the same deal as Africa and will allocate them through the 2025 Asian Rugby Championship in June, but the difference is that their automatic qualification is a foregone conclusion - Hong Kong are risibly ahead of the rest. The play-off place is interesting though - battle between South Korea and UAE, which UAE won last year. Don't really associate them with rugby, although I suppose I should with the Dubai 7s. Actually... [quick google], yeah that tracks - while one probably shouldn't judge solely by surnames, not a single one of the UAE squad has an Arabic name, the first names include Riann/Pieter/Handre/Carel, Justin/Rory/David/Jonathan, and Epeli/Emosi/Sakiusa/Esekaia and the vast majority of them play for a team called "Dubai Exiles" (with a fair representation from Dubai Tigers and Abu Dhabi Harlequins (and one from Shannon!)), so that's our explanation. South Korea, on the other hand, have not a single English/South African/Polynesian name among them.
The Americas have been split - South America get one free place (almost certainly Uruguay's), one play-off place for an automatic qualification, and one repechage (between Paraguay, Chile, and Brazil, most likely Chile), both allocated by a knockout. North America has been lumped in with Oceania to form "Pacific" which qualifies vis the Pacific Nations Cup (ignoring Japan and Fiji who are already qualified. They get 3 guaranteed (Samoa, Tonga, and almost certainly USA, given Canada's malaise) and last place gets the playoff against South America 2 to decide who qualifies and who goes into the repechage. You'd likely expect Chile to beat out Canada in that game.
So, we already know we've got Georgia, Spain, Portugal, and Romania, we're almost certain to get Hong Kong, Uruguay, Samoa, Tonga, USA, which leaves us Africa 1, Pacific/South America playoff winner, and a repechage tournament of Europe 5, South America 3, South America / Pacific play-off loser and Africa / Asia play-off winner, taking place in November 2025.
Seems very early to have qualification confirmed, but I suspect the strategy is because the IRB plan on chucking a lot of money and expertise at the new minnows and spending 2 years running a hothouse of at least semi-professionalism to try and build teams capable of competing. They don't want to have expanded the competition and have that result in the wrong kind of records being smashed.
Puja
Rugby Africa gets one guaranteed place and one play-off spot to get into the repechage (playing against Asia 2). They had a knockout tournament last November to set rankings for a round-robin tournament this year - ordinarily you'd expect Nambia vs Kenya to be the final with the expectation that they'd end up being Africa 1 and 2 respectively, but both of them went out in the semi finals to Zimbabwe and Algeria (with Zimbabwe comfortably winning top-seeding). Whether that's a shift in power in the continent, or just one-offs in a knockout and normal service will be restored in the round robin, I don't know.
Asia Rugby get the same deal as Africa and will allocate them through the 2025 Asian Rugby Championship in June, but the difference is that their automatic qualification is a foregone conclusion - Hong Kong are risibly ahead of the rest. The play-off place is interesting though - battle between South Korea and UAE, which UAE won last year. Don't really associate them with rugby, although I suppose I should with the Dubai 7s. Actually... [quick google], yeah that tracks - while one probably shouldn't judge solely by surnames, not a single one of the UAE squad has an Arabic name, the first names include Riann/Pieter/Handre/Carel, Justin/Rory/David/Jonathan, and Epeli/Emosi/Sakiusa/Esekaia and the vast majority of them play for a team called "Dubai Exiles" (with a fair representation from Dubai Tigers and Abu Dhabi Harlequins (and one from Shannon!)), so that's our explanation. South Korea, on the other hand, have not a single English/South African/Polynesian name among them.
The Americas have been split - South America get one free place (almost certainly Uruguay's), one play-off place for an automatic qualification, and one repechage (between Paraguay, Chile, and Brazil, most likely Chile), both allocated by a knockout. North America has been lumped in with Oceania to form "Pacific" which qualifies vis the Pacific Nations Cup (ignoring Japan and Fiji who are already qualified. They get 3 guaranteed (Samoa, Tonga, and almost certainly USA, given Canada's malaise) and last place gets the playoff against South America 2 to decide who qualifies and who goes into the repechage. You'd likely expect Chile to beat out Canada in that game.
So, we already know we've got Georgia, Spain, Portugal, and Romania, we're almost certain to get Hong Kong, Uruguay, Samoa, Tonga, USA, which leaves us Africa 1, Pacific/South America playoff winner, and a repechage tournament of Europe 5, South America 3, South America / Pacific play-off loser and Africa / Asia play-off winner, taking place in November 2025.
Seems very early to have qualification confirmed, but I suspect the strategy is because the IRB plan on chucking a lot of money and expertise at the new minnows and spending 2 years running a hothouse of at least semi-professionalism to try and build teams capable of competing. They don't want to have expanded the competition and have that result in the wrong kind of records being smashed.
Puja
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