Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Rugby World Cup Draw - Why so early?

I am a supporter of using the IRB rankings to shape the seedings for the Rugby World Cup, but why so earlier?

Any thing can happening in three years, just look at Wales. One minute they are chucked out of the RWC by Fiji and the next they are Grand Slam champions. We just have to look at England to see the reverse.

I am with Zinzan Brooke, who when speaking to the BBC said - "I'd like to see a situation where the draw is done a year before the World Cup begins. By doing that you will avoid mismatches in the pool stages. "

The only reason I can think of that makes the draw so early is a matter of qualifying, for those who have to do it. I am not sure the logistics of the process but surely it does not take three years to sort out qualifiers.

Even if it does there must be a way round such an early draw.

Do the qualifying in stages, the teams in the lower ends of the world rankings have to start qualifying earlier and the system works its way up until a year before the event.

For Example
Teams ranked - lets say for the sake of argument - 50th (at that point) and below start qualifying 3 years before the RWC.
X number of those teams progress to play teams ranked 25th and below 2 years before RWC.
X number of those teams progress to play teams ranked 13th and below 1 year before.
Who ever comes through, clearly this will have to be regionally divided too, will then be placed in a draw with the top 12 teams (that did not need to go through qualifying, they could at this point be 13th or below in the rankings), and the pools decided with IRB rankings at that point.

Does that make sense? Does that work? Or am I complete wrong and confusing things more?

1 comment:

  1. They have to do it now because the AB's have peaked and will therefore get the best of the draw. Cynical? Moi?

    ReplyDelete