Road to next World Cup lacks jeopardy
A weekly look at the game's other talking points
UNLESS I've missed something pertinent – and it's not unknown – qualification for RWC2027 is going to be relatively straightforward and stress free for the top four teams from Rugby Europe next season.
In fact I will tell you now who books their tickets for Australia. It will be Georgia, Portugal, Spain and Romania with either the Netherlands or Belgium advancing to the four-team repechage tournament at the end of the year where they will have one final shot at glory.
There seems almost no jeopardy and in one way I get that because manifestly the whole idea of expanding the Rugby World Cup from 20 to 24 teams – not necessarily a great move but let's save that for another day – is to get more nations involved in Australia. To “supercharge the global development of the game” to use World Rugby's slightly overblown phrase.
If there are 12 not eight qualifying spots up for grabs you would imagine it's going to be a little easier. And that will give some of the nations more time to prepare, plan and develop for the World Cup finals rather than being involved in a dog fight to actually get there. All this I note and understand. But rugby's endless obsession, from top to bottom, with micromanaging competitions and weighting draws massively in favour of seeded nations does grate more than a little.
Previously Rugby Europe's three spots in RWC finals were decided by a two-year long campaign which amalgamated two Rugby Europe Championships and involved 10 matches for each team. Five home, five away in all weather and conditions. Often testing pressure rugby, grudge games with plenty at stake which could be built up by the local media with the entire process creating its own narrative.
Admittedly there was never any serious challenge to Georgia for top spot but there was a fantastically entertaining and often controversial and bloody dust up for second and third played out over two seasons.
In 2019 we had both Spain and Romania, having eventually qualified by the skin of their teeth, then being dramatically chucked out for fielding ineligible players which gave others such as Russia an unexpected and frankly undeserved trip to Japan while Germany found themselves in the repechage.
Meanwhile in 2023 Spain's deduction of points for again fielding an ineligible player allowed Portugal to travel to the repechage in Dubai where they qualified in the most dramatic fashion. Battle hardened, they then progressed to France and gave an excellent account of themselves.
This time though World Cup qualifications will almost certainly all be over bar the shouting by Sunday February 9 next year after just two weeks of rugby. Let me explain.
The top tier of the REC now consists of eight teams with two seeded pools of four. Using what the blazers call the serpentine format those pools give you four semi-finalists and determine who plays in the 5-6th and 7-8th place play-offs. Now that's perfectly ok for an annual championship, indeed I quite like it and wrote accordingly last season. But it's not so great when you are trying to determine World Cup qualification strictly on merit.
In 2025 the top seeds Georgia (1) are drawn in Pool 1 with Spain (4), Netherlands (5) and newly promoted Switzerland (8) and guess what Georgia's first two games are at home against the Netherlands and Switzerland. Unless lightning strikes the Lelos will be home and hosed and already be qualified for RWC2027, and the semi-final of next year's REC, by the time they play Spain in Madrid. World Cup qualification will be done and dusted in just eight days next February.
Spain also have the luxury of two home games out of the three pool games while in Pool 2 – which features Portugal (2) Romania (3) Belgium ( 6) and Germany (7) – Portugal and Romania of course have two home games and one away. As top seed both Portugal's home games are against the lowest seeds in their pool. Naturally.
“The qualifiers for RWC 2027 should at least be cut-throat, edgy affa irs”
Call me old fashioned but this arrangement is inherently unfair to seeds five to eight. I particularly feel for the Netherlands who are coming up fast on the rails and over a two-year 10-game qualifying process might have bloodied a few noses and emerged as the surprise packet, the next Portugal.
Realistically now their best bet is to ensure they make the 5th-6th place play-off and then hope they can make the repechage. Ditto Belgium who had their moments in last season's tournament including a famous home win over Portugal.
Elsewhere, the Pacific Nations Cup is going to be a little short of jeopardy as well. The new format of this rehashed tournament sees six teams – Japan, Fiji, Canada, USA , Tonga and Samoa – divided into two pools of three. Three RWC places have been allocated from it but as Fiji and Japan have pre-qualified that means only one participating team will not qualify automatically and that team will then go to the repechage.
Again, I like the feel of it as an annual tournament with logical geographical match ups and old rivalries but as a World Cup qualifying process it seems a little anodyne and going through the motions.
In the absence of regular fixtures with T1 nations that both these Pacific and European nations crave these World Cup qualifiers should at least be cut-throat, edgy encounters that mimic the tension and importance of matches at the World Cup finals themselves.
