The "Expansion for 2027" thread

[Puja]

https://12ft.io/www.telegraph.co.uk/rug ... ge-format/

The IRB seriously considering 24 teams for 2027, with the aim of committing to that early and investing in the high performance programs of the likely 4 qualifiers (like they ever weren't going to be investing in the USA though!). Wooo! Great news!


The IRB considering using the "Swiss model" for the groups in 2027 (AKA the bizarre two group thing which blighted the ERC for a couple of seasons).


Who the fuck looks at the success that previous world cups have had with pool stages, looks at how UEFA and FIFA expanded their tournaments, and then thinks, "Seems fun, that shitty thing that everyone hated in the ERC should *definitely* be in consideration as well"?

It should be 4 pools of 6 (one extra game, but lots of T2/3 vs T2/3 games and no extra time needed as no bye weeks) or 6 pools of 4 (additional qualifiers for knockouts driving interest in the likes of Italy, Georgia and Australia, no extra games as additional knockout but one fewer pool game, only downside fewer T2 vs T2 games which could be sorted with a plate comp). Anything else is madness.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

Yeah, if expanding, then 4 groups of 6 is just... F...ing obvious - no extra weeks, just extra teams.
If you can afford extra weeks, then Plate and Shield knock-outs for 3&4 and 5&6 in the groups.

6 pools of 4 is bad but not too terrible; but... whatever the hell that mess was... what a way to lose interest!

[Sourdust]

I like 4x6, it seems a no-brainer. There's the added advantage of making situations like Scotland's (effectively eliminated on Day One) much less likely.

3rd and 4th in each group into a plate comp. Surely there's enough room for that midweek, with the cup knockouts at the weekends?

The problem with 6x4 is that - most of the time at least - there won't be 6 elite teams, so there will always be one or two "easy" groups without a serious contender.

[Cameo]

I really don't get the Swiss model or the various different versions of it. I think they are trying something similar in the football Champions League soon.

It seems obvious to me that, if there is scope for it (which there is), you always aim for a group system that:

- has everyone play everyone the same number of times (ideally with everyone playing each game round)
- has a set number of teams go through, without reference to other groups that might be different in quality and played at different times.

Anything else gets harder to explain to a non avid fan. TBH, I'm a big rugby fan (albeit slightly time constrained) and I have taken limited interest in the ERC pool stages recently and just thought I'd wait for the knockouts

I get there are some successful tournaments that don't have this (e.g. the NFL and the NRL), but the RWC (and the URC and possibly the URC) have it in their hands to avoid it.

[Lizard]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

[Cameo]

I don't really get the games of little interest point, or at least dont see it as that big an issue. Sure, it's a problem but introducing one more team just means you don't have a random two week gap (if you think that is needed you could slot it in before the knockouts). I'd rather watch Scotland v USA rather than Scotland v nobody.

Also, it might mean more competitive group games. Many of the closest and best games so far have been minnow on minnow. It'd be nice (and good for their development) for them to have two winnable games a tournament rather than just one. Of course, it would be even better if they weren't meaningless and there was a conference tournament for 3rd and 4th midweek during the knockouts.

It's not perfect but nothing is until we have more competitive teams, but I'd prefer it to any format I need to read twice before understanding let alone explaining (even though I see the logic of it)

[Lizard]

I see where you’re coming from. I think a potentially 8-week tournament is too long.

And for all the talk about a Plate competition, or B grade cup or whatever, I’m yet to hear a Tier 2 nation ask for it. What they ask for is more funding, more tests all round, and matches against Tier 1 sides between world cups.

[Lizard]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

So if you took the top 24 ranked teams and seeded them into 4 pools then sub-pooled them, you’d get:

A1: 1 Ireland, 9 Argentina, 17 Uruguay
A2: 8 Fiji, 16 Portugal, 24 Hong Kong

B1: 2 France, 10 Aust, 18 USA
B2: 7 Wales, 15 Tonga , 23 Canada

C1: 3 SA, 11 Italy, 19 Romania
C2: 6 England, 14 Georgia, 22 Chile

D1: 4 NZ, 12 Samoa, 20 Spain
D2: 5 Scotland, 13 Japan, 21 Namibia

So Ireland would play Fiji, Portugal and Hong Kong as would Argentina and Uruguay.

[Cameo]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

So if you took the top 24 ranked teams and seeded them into 4 pools then sub-pooled them, you’d get:

A1: 1 Ireland, 9 Argentina, 17 Uruguay
A2: 8 Fiji, 16 Portugal, 24 Hong Kong

B1: 2 France, 10 Aust, 18 USA
B2: 7 Wales, 15 Tonga , 23 Canada

C1: 3 SA, 11 Italy, 19 Romania
C2: 6 England, 14 Georgia, 22 Chile

D1: 4 NZ, 12 Samoa, 20 Spain
D2: 5 Scotland, 13 Japan, 21 Namibia

So Ireland would play Fiji, Portugal and Hong Kong as would Argentina and Uruguay.

I see your logic but I just don't like merged tables where not everyone has played each other. You also end up with a round of sixteen with only twelve teams in it, though I suppose you could let the pool winners into the quarters and have a fun playoff round of second vs third so I'll let you off that.

Back to my big issue. Take your first pool for example, the following results are not particularly unlikely (they follow the seedings after all):

A1: 1 Ireland, 9 Argentina, 17 Uruguay
A2: 8 Fiji, 16 Portugal, 24 Hong Kong

Ireland win vs everyone, get bonus points and don't give any up.

Fiji lose to Ireland, win comfortably vs Argentina but without a bonus point, and smash Uruguay but with a bonus point.

Argentina lose to Fiji but get bonus points vs Portugal and Hong Kong.

Somehow Arentina have finished second on 10 points ahead of Fiji on 9.

Even worse, Uruguay have got bonus points vs Portugal and Hong Kong too. Suddenly Fiji are going g home despite comfortably beating the two teams ahead of them and those teams doing nothing special in their other games.

Similar things (at least the first part of it) aren't much of a stretch in any of the groups.

[Which Tyler]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

Along those lines, my actual preference is a smaller, higher quality RWC, with a single, defined qualifying tournament. I know Puja strongly disagrees from when I first suggested this.

Top 8 from the previous RWC automatically qualify, but have a proper, stand-alone tournament (either another 4x4 or 4x6) to fill the last 8 places held in the June-July window of the year before the RWC. World cup seedings taken immediately at the end of that tourney.

ETA: here's that suggestion if you're interested: viewtopic.php?p=303238#p303238
ETA2: which you probably aren't, because you replied to it at the time.

[Lizard]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

So if you took the top 24 ranked teams and seeded them into 4 pools then sub-pooled them, you’d get:

A1: 1 Ireland, 9 Argentina, 17 Uruguay
A2: 8 Fiji, 16 Portugal, 24 Hong Kong

B1: 2 France, 10 Aust, 18 USA
B2: 7 Wales, 15 Tonga , 23 Canada

C1: 3 SA, 11 Italy, 19 Romania
C2: 6 England, 14 Georgia, 22 Chile

D1: 4 NZ, 12 Samoa, 20 Spain
D2: 5 Scotland, 13 Japan, 21 Namibia

So Ireland would play Fiji, Portugal and Hong Kong as would Argentina and Uruguay.

I see your logic but I just don't like merged tables where not everyone has played each other. You also end up with a round of sixteen with only twelve teams in it, though I suppose you could let the pool winners into the quarters and have a fun playoff round of second vs third so I'll let you off that.

Back to my big issue. Take your first pool for example, the following results are not particularly unlikely (they follow the seedings after all):

A1: 1 Ireland, 9 Argentina, 17 Uruguay
A2: 8 Fiji, 16 Portugal, 24 Hong Kong

Ireland win vs everyone, get bonus points and don't give any up.

Fiji lose to Ireland, win comfortably vs Argentina but without a bonus point, and smash Uruguay but with a bonus point.

Argentina lose to Fiji but get bonus points vs Portugal and Hong Kong.

Somehow Arentina have finished second on 10 points ahead of Fiji on 9.

Even worse, Uruguay have got bonus points vs Portugal and Hong Kong too. Suddenly Fiji are going g home despite comfortably beating the two teams ahead of them and those teams doing nothing special in their other games.

Similar things (at least the first part of it) aren't much of a stretch in any of the groups.

Fuck. I meant top 4 from each pool into round of 16

[Cameo]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

Along those lines, my actual preference is a smaller, higher quality RWC, with a single, defined qualifying tournament. I know Puja strongly disagrees from when I first suggested this.

Top 8 from the previous RWC automatically qualify, but have a proper, stand-alone tournament (either another 4x4 or 4x6) to fill the last 8 places held in the June-July window of the year before the RWC. World cup seedings taken immediately at the end of that tourney.

ETA: here's that suggestion if you're interested: viewtopic.php?p=303238#p303238
ETA2: which you probably aren't, because you replied to it at the time.

I can see the merit in that. The RWC itself would be great, and maybe that's the main thing.

My worry with the qualifying tournament is that everyone would say they'd be interested and they'd get TV deals, and then they wouldn't. It's like all those people who bang on about how good a 6N B tournament would be and how they'd love to watch it, without realising there has been one for years.

As I say, though, maybe the World Cup itself is the main thing and it should be hard to qualify. Rugby isn't like football where people can play every few days, so maybe making it bigger isn't realistic without it becoming dangerous or stupidly long.

[Puja]

4 round robin pools of 6 will produce too many games, and too many cripple fights of little interest.

Better to divide each pool into 2 - 1st, 3rd and 5th seed in sub-pool A and 2nd, 4th and 6th in sub-pool B. Each team in A plays every team in B (but no teams in A), and vice versa. Match points for both sub-pools are entered into one table. Top 3 go into round of 16.

Along those lines, my actual preference is a smaller, higher quality RWC, with a single, defined qualifying tournament. I know Puja strongly disagrees from when I first suggested this.

Top 8 from the previous RWC automatically qualify, but have a proper, stand-alone tournament (either another 4x4 or 4x6) to fill the last 8 places held in the June-July window of the year before the RWC. World cup seedings taken immediately at the end of that tourney.

ETA: here's that suggestion if you're interested: viewtopic.php?p=303238#p303238
ETA2: which you probably aren't, because you replied to it at the time.

I can see the merit in that. The RWC itself would be great, and maybe that's the main thing.

My worry with the qualifying tournament is that everyone would say they'd be interested and they'd get TV deals, and then they wouldn't. It's like all those people who bang on about how good a 6N B tournament would be and how they'd love to watch it, without realising there has been one for years.

As I say, though, maybe the World Cup itself is the main thing and it should be hard to qualify. Rugby isn't like football where people can play every few days, so maybe making it bigger isn't realistic without it becoming dangerous or stupidly long.

Nail -> Head. Any pre-tournament tournament would only be of interest to rugby nerds like us and would be unlikely to attract any attention at all. It certainly wouldn't attract the same cachet for developing rugby nations - "We're in the World Cup and getting to play the best teams in the world as the minnow everyone loves" is worth getting the sport on television for once and attracting new eyes and interest, with the additional boost in sponsorship that suggests. A fair majority of Portugal's team took up rugby because of seeing the 2007 team. "We're made it through to the final qualification tournament"? Boring - come back when you qualify for the actual world cup.

That's not to mention the logistical issues. Not knowing the pool draw and match schedule or half the teams until a few months before the tournament would play hob with selling tickets and packages. It would also place those teams at a significant disadvantage - while the top 8 (who might be very different from 4 years' ago, as the current tournament shows) are doing fitness camps and preparing themselves, the lesser teams are flogging themselves trying to get themselves in and seeded high enough to avoid the pool of death.

I think my main argument for expansion and against contraction is that the Rugby World Cup is supposed to be a celebration of our sport. We should be looking to share it with as many teams are as feasible. Look at the support that Portugal have had this tournament - yes, they've not won a game (yet), but the competition would've been poorer and duller and more insular had we said, "Nah, this is only for the absolute elite and we're not interested in you." Would Japan have even qualified to play in 2015 if there were only 16 teams? They had only won 1 RWC game in their history before that and would've been an acceptable casualty of contraction even to most rugby fans, but them beating South Africa was a result famous enough to be known outside of rugby nerd circles and the game would've been poorer for that, even without it having been the catalyst for them becoming a new rugby power. I don't even know whether Tonga would've qualified for 2011 to shock France if there were only 16.

I don't get why we would want to cling this great sport to ourselves and raise the barriers to entry for other nations. Of course expansion shouldn't be done willy-nilly and devalue the tournament but, where it's feasible, we should be looking to spread the love wherever we can.

Puja

[Which Tyler]

That's not to mention the logistical issues. Not knowing the pool draw and match schedule or half the teams until a few months before the tournament would play hob with selling tickets and packages. It would also place those teams at a significant disadvantage - while the top 8 (who might be very different from 4 years' ago, as the current tournament shows) are doing fitness camps and preparing themselves, the lesser teams are flogging themselves trying to get themselves in and seeded high enough to avoid the pool of death.

I fully get the other criticisms, and agree in part. I guess it comes down to whether the RWC is a celebration of rugby, or a best-of-the-best tournament; and whilst some are turned on to rugby by watching their nation get humped by 100 points, others are turned off.
Ultimately, and IMO, it's a question without a good answer.

The bit I left quoted however - I'm far from convinced that 14 months is too little to sort out the logistics; and I really REALLY can't see any nation doing 14 months of dedicated fitness camps and preparation.

[Puja]

That's not to mention the logistical issues. Not knowing the pool draw and match schedule or half the teams until a few months before the tournament would play hob with selling tickets and packages. It would also place those teams at a significant disadvantage - while the top 8 (who might be very different from 4 years' ago, as the current tournament shows) are doing fitness camps and preparing themselves, the lesser teams are flogging themselves trying to get themselves in and seeded high enough to avoid the pool of death.

I fully get the other criticisms, and agree in part. I guess it comes down to whether the RWC is a celebration of rugby, or a best-of-the-best tournament; and whilst some are turned on to rugby by watching their nation get humped by 100 points, others are turned off.
Ultimately, and IMO, it's a question without a good answer.

The bit I left quoted however - I'm far from convinced that 14 months is too little to sort out the logistics; and I really REALLY can't see any nation doing 14 months of dedicated fitness camps and preparation.

Ah, I can answer that last bit - that's because I'm incapable of basic reading comprehension on a Saturday morning and thought you had said it was in the June/July of the same year, not the one before. My bad.

Puja

[Puja]

Brian Moore's in favour of a plate competition: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union ... g-nations/

I do agree a bit with the arguments that this tournament is too long and drawn out - it is important not to utterly stitch up smaller nations with quick turnarounds, but at the moment, everything is going interminably slowly, not helped by the bye weeks issue. Expansion would at least solve the latter, whichever way it was done.

If we had the 6 pools of 4 idea, with a plate comp, then we could have a tournament like the football world cup, where nearly every day has a game on it during the pool stages and there's midweek games during the knock-outs.

Fri: 2 x Pool A games
Sat: 2 x Pool B games
Sun: 2 x Pool C games
Mon: 2 x Pool D games
Tues: 2 x Pool E games
Weds 2 x Pool F games
Thurs: 2 x Pool A games
etc.

That way each team has 6 days between games. When the round of 16 games come up, then Pool A's last group games would've been Weds and Pool F's last games would've been Monday - you could start the knock-outs on Friday scheduling teams from Pool A and B, while reserving Pool F's games till Sunday, giving everyone at least 6 days to prepare, and then have the plate comp starting on Tues, Weds, Thurs on the midweek before the main comp's quarters, and carry on from there.

The same thing could be done with 4 pools of 6 as well.

Puja

[Lizard]

I’ll say it again - nowhere have I seen any T2 nation calling for a plate competition at the World Cup.

[Puja]

I’ll say it again - nowhere have I seen any T2 nation calling for a plate competition at the World Cup.

Has there been any particular call against it? You've thought they'd be keen on the additional exposure and chance for more winnable games, but it's possible there's some issue that I'm missing.

Puja

[Lizard]

I’ll say it again - nowhere have I seen any T2 nation calling for a plate competition at the World Cup.

Has there been any particular call against it? You've thought they'd be keen on the additional exposure and chance for more winnable games, but it's possible there's some issue that I'm missing.

Puja

I don’t know if the T2 teams can be taken as speaking with a single voice, but my take on it is that they want more regular fixtures and more against T1 sides. A four-yearly certificate of participation series doesn’t really tick that box and might be detrimental from a resources perspective.

My view is that everyone views the “Bronze” Final as a total waste of time. How much more would the public think this of a plate section? Who would watch this? Putting some more effort into promoting and broadcasting the various qualifying series would have more legs, I reckon.

[Cameo]

Seems they have gone for expansion.

Six groups of four. Top two get through plus best four runners up. Then knockout from last sixteen onwards. Total tournament slightly shorter (by a week I think with the rest week removed)

Some positives and some downsides:

- More chances for smaller nations to play, and to have a chance of getting through to the knockouts.

- More momentum for tournament without the rest weeks. With the easier group stages, I don't think there should be too many worries about opportunities for rest.

- Very little jeopardy (or big matches) for tier one nations in the group stages. Even Scotland will be confident of getting through.

- The third places could easily be a bit unfair. Could come down to e.g. whether Tonga can hammer Hong Kong by more than Samoa hammer Romania (or which one has faced a weakened top nation and shipped less points).

- More knockout games is probably more fun. Scotland and Ireland might even win one.

Probably not what I would have done but not terrible, and there is no perfect solution.

I have much bigger issues with the new global schedule (no summer tours even though they have been great recently, no real space for games for smaller nations, no opportunity for promotion for years).