Archives for "October, 2008"

So read on to find out how this years world cup will be laid out.

To start the tournament there are 3 different groups or pools if you prefer, suprisingly called Pool 1, Pool 2 and Pool 3.

Pool 1 basically includes all the good Rugby League nations and Pools 2 and 3 include the rest which were all sorted out through some qualifying games at some point. So the tournament start as follows.

Pool 1	Pool 2	Pool 3
Australia	France	Tonga
New Zealand	Fiji	Ireland
England	Scotland	Samoa
Papau New Guinea

Each team gets the pleasure of playing each of the teams in it’s pool once and the results then sort out who goes through to the next round. 

The top teams from pools 2 and 3 go into a Semi-Final Qualifier whilst the 2nd placed teams and 3rd placed teams from the two groups then play off in ranking games against each other. (I’m not sure if the ranking games are just for world cup purposes or general national ranking)

The winner of the semi final will then go on to play the team that finishes top of pool 1 whilst the bottom team from group 1 is out of the competition and teams 2 and 3 play off in the other semi final. 

Then as is usual for a competition the winners of the semi finals play in the final, so at least something is normal.

You can see all of the world cup fixtures here at the official rugby league world cup site.

I’m not quite sure why there aren’t 3 groups of 4? I guess it’s maybe a financial thing or just to do with the fact that the last world cup wasn’t that great. I know the additional two teams wouldn’t be competitive but surely it’s good to have a nation represented in the competition anyway? Outside of Australia, New Zealand and England there isn’t anyone with a chance of winning anyway of course, and even then you’d be hard pushed to see either of those teams winning against the Aussies, but you never know.