Who would you like swimming in your pool?

It's the RWC draw tomorrow. The three bands of seeded teams are known.

The pool leaders are NZ, France, Australia and South Africa.

Who wants to join them and who do you want along for the ride?

Choices in second band are England, Ireland, Samoa and Argentina

Third band are Italy, Scotland, Tonga and Wales.


Name your poison.

Can Ireland get Australia and Italy again then? SA would be a good match up to.

NZ, France or Wales...no thanks ...

I think a lot of tier 2 and 3 teams could easily beat each other and have a fair old pop as some of the tier 1s.

Will make it very interesting draw time.

I can already see how this is gonna go, something like

NZ, England, Wales,
SA, Ireland, Scotland
Australia, Samoa, Tonga
France, Argentina, Italy

And you know what I would really like that actually, would make things very interesting.

That would be an ideal pool for NZ bsando. I think that'd give us the ideal amount of pressure to perform. I really hope we get a pool like that. Indeed the other pools look tasty as well. It just goes to show, things are much tighter in the table than previously claimed by many. Bring it on!

bsando wrote:I can already see how this is gonna go, something like

NZ, England, Wales,
SA, Ireland, Scotland
Australia, Samoa, Tonga
France, Argentina, Italy

And you know what I would really like that actually, would make things very interesting.

They'd be excellent pools, very evenly matched.

From an Ireland perspective I'd love that pool. Very tough indeed but not mission impossible to qualify from and some great match ups with our SA and Scottish friends....

well from an England fan viewpoint would like either France or Aus as a top seed as we seem to beat them more regularly than SA or NZ. Would like Italy as third seed, a team I'd feel very confident of beating and not too physical so wouldn't be worried about injuries, etc.

I'd like to see France England and Wales, probably the best chance Wales had of progressing, NZ and Ireland would be toughest IMHO!!

I really don't know how the composition of the pools are determined. However, I hope we do not end up with a pool consisting of France, England, and Wales/Scotland. Too close to home. The home nations teams need to be spread around the pools, especially at the England based RWC.

I think a pool with South Africa, Argentina and Wales will be a physical minefield. No one would win the RWC after getting out of that pool, methinks.

Hardly relevant who is in your pool when the World Cup is three years away.

Grey

Did you not just watch the RWC, SA, Samoa and Namibia (lots of SA's) were all in Wales group. Coming out of a physical group is really how you negotiate it..

Personally I don't see the problem with having top sides in your pool. To win the thing you've got beat the best, and having someone like NZ in your group is going to be the right sort of battle hardening, plus even if you don't beat them first off, as long as you come second (if you don't you've no chance of winning the whole thing and going one game further isn't much to brag about) you won't meet them again till the final and you'll have a better understanding of what it takes to overcome the team as they are.