WC Scheduling - Could the Top Tier Teams ..........

A lot has been said about the shceduling of some of the games and how unfair its been on the lower tier teams who have had short turn arounds between games.

For eg Russsia will play 3 games in 10 days whislt Namibia played their first 2 in space of four days and will do the same for their last 2. This left me to wondering how many of the Top Tier would cope with turn around times like that and against the same calibre of opposition.

With our (Wales) current back row injuries I strongly suspect that we had to play Fiji and Samoa in a 4 day period like Namibia did or even Italy and Ireland in a 5 day turn around like Russia will do.

I think they should go back to 5 groups of 4 and use the 1999 format. Rewards teams for winning a group as well.

Dave wrote:I think they should go back to 5 groups of 4 and use the 1999 format. Rewards teams for winning a group as well.

+1

The five teams in each group means the that their is an odd team in each round.

The idea situation would be four team groups with either four groups (16 teams/ backwards step) or eight groups (32 teams/ probably too much for now).

That leaves really two alternatives:-

1) The five groups of four teams as suggested above.

or (my idea below)

2) A 24 team world cup in a similar style to the Italia '90 World Cup.
- You would have six groups of four teams.
- There would still be seven games to win the World Cup.
- The bigger teams would be better spread out in the Group stage.
- Smaller nations would have less games against bigger nations and a better chance of winning/ progressing. (16 teams into knock out stage).
- The bigger knock stages would make the World Cup even more different to the nations tournaments.
- There would be less room for mistakes from teams so all teams would have to be on their game from the start of the tournament.

Based on IRB rankings (with a little artistic licence with confederations) the draw would look something like this:

Group A:- New Zealand, Wales, Japan, Spain
Group B:- South Africa, Scotland, Georgia, Chile
Group C:- Australia, Italy, Tonga, Uruguay
Group D:- England, Argentina, Fiji, Russia
Group E:- France, Samoa, USA, Portugal
Group F:- Ireland, Canada, Romania, Namibia