Rugby World Cup groupings?

Question

Can anyone explain how the groups are chosen? How does each team get in each group? Could you ever get Australia, South Africa, NZ, in the same group, for example?

Answer 1

They are seeded to keep the top teams in different groups, the aim being to get the top teams all through to the knockout rounds to make sure the tournament is top quality. This is common in most sports.

4 groups - 8 seeds- 2 seeds per group, eg England and South Africa.

Answer 2

Yes , Thats right .. However this current Cup shows up a major flaw in the Seedings selection ..

They need to do the groupings and seedings much closer to each world cup so that the groupings reflect the more current standing of each team ..

The top 4 countries in the world rankings say 12 months out from any cup should head the 4 groups  . That would have been  NZ , France , Aussie  and SA  .  Then seed the next 4 sides on rankings as second in each group  etc

That would then be much more accurate .. England should not be no 1 really as on rankings they are and have been no 7 for ages ..

This would also have the affect of making countries all put out their best sides for tests all throughout the years inbetween cups as the higher your world ranking the higher you would be in the groupings .. Would stop all these countries just treating tests as non imprtant and putting out b and c teams which do nothing for a real contest ..

Answer 3

Yeh above answer is correct.

The top four teams from the last world cup were the top seeds for their pool. 2003 WC - 1st Eng, 2nd Aus, 3rd Nz, 4th Fra, these top 4 were placed in that order as leaders of their pool - Pool A - Eng, pool B - Aus, pool C - NZ, pool D Fra.

The rest of the positions were based on rankings, the problem is that the pools were made 3 years ago. At the time the pools were a fair reflection of the world rankings but the rankings have changed since then. For example pool D has 3 teams in the top 6 - france, argentina and ireland.

So you could in theory have Australia, SA and NZ in the same pool but only if the rankings allowed it. This is very unlikely because all 3 teams are likely to finish in the top 4 of this WC.

Answer 4

gee icedraw you stole my thunder,i agree totally,i get fed up of European teams coming to the Southern hemisphere with 2nd and 3rd rate teams,arnt they embaressed about it?from a spectators point of veiw ,we just dnt go to these matches and these teams wonder why we think they are c**p eg,France,England.But Ireland ,Wales  Scotland and Italy get full respect from us (NZ} because they front up always get standing ovations for their efforts