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Gerry Thornley: Rugby doesn’t have the depth of quality to justify an expanded World Cup

Reports that the 2027 and 2031 Rugby World Cups are to be expanded from 20 to 24 teams come as no surprise

Further expansion to the Rugby World Cup runs the risk of more one-sided contests and lopsided scorelines. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

Gerry Thornley's face
Gerry Thornley
Fri Sep 29 2023 - 17:10

Whenever a governing body suggests expanding a competition’s format by incorporating extra teams and additional fixtures, the temptation is to be wary. While we are invariably told the motives for doing so are to help grow the sport, this is usually camouflaging a political play off the pitch designed to broaden the base of the power brokers behind it.

Both football’s World Cup and, in particular, the looming expanded version of the Champions League, look bloated rather than superior in quality and it could well be argued that rugby’s Champions Cup is none the better for returning from 20 to 24 teams.

Yet reports in The Times and the Telegraph two days ago that the 2027 and 2031 Rugby World Cups are to be expanded from 20 to 24 teams come as no surprise. In 2018, the then chief executive of World Rugby, Brett Gosper, said that expansion to 24 countries was a question of “when rather than if” and World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont is also an advocate of the idea.

The reports vary as to how the expanded 24-team World Cup would work.

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The Times suggests that World Rugby’s preference is for six pools of four, with an additional round-of-16 stage. Two teams would qualify from each pool, plus four of the best third-placed sides.

The World Cup has been a 20-team competition since the 1999 edition and under the current five-team pool stage format came into being in 2003, there are 48 games in total, with 40 pool matches to eliminate 10, or one half, of the 20 teams.

If the new 24-team, six pools of four and last 16 round came into being, there would be 52 matches in total, of which 36 matches would be played in order to eliminate eight teams. Yawn!

There’s no doubt that this World Cup has been notable, among other things, for the competitiveness and entertaining brand of rugby played by Uruguay, Portugal (competing in just their second World Cup and first since 2007) and Chile, in its maiden World Cup.

Yet against that, there have been scorelines of 82-8, 71-3, 76-0, 96-0 and 71-0, and there might well be a couple more where they came from, starting this weekend when Scotland meet Romania.

These results were like grist to the mill of the anti-rugby lobby and a further expansion runs the risk of even more one-sided contests and lopsided scorelines.

The four highest ranked sides not at France 2023 are USA (18th), Spain (20th), Canada (23rd) and Hong Kong (24). Of those the USA are the best equipped to reach previous heights, and perhaps Canada too at a bigger push.

Spain had finished second to Georgia in the European qualification tournament and while Romania were the immediate beneficiaries of Spain being deducted 10 points, and effectively disqualified, this actually opened the door for Portugal, who moved up from fourth to third and entered the repechage, which they won, by edging out the USA on points’ difference.

Spain’s punishment hardly fitted the crime, as they had fielded an illegible player in 52-7 and 43-0 wins over the Netherlands, the weakest of the six teams in the European qualifying competition. The point being that, judging by their results, although Spain finished off their campaign with a 49-15 loss to Georgia, they had previously beaten Romania and Portugal at home having lost to them away.

However, like Romania, Russia are in decline as well as being outcasts, and the next highest ranked European side are the Netherlands, who aside from a walkover over Russia, lost their other nine matches by an average of 40 points. The anticipated rise of Germany, ranked 32nd in the world, hasn’t happened.

As for Hong Kong, they were beaten 44-22 by Tonga in the Asia/Pacific regional play-off and subsequently lost by 44-14 to Portugal and 49-7 to the USA.

Quite simply, World Rugby doesn’t have the depth of quality to justify an expansion to 24 teams, and what’s more they only have four years to rectify this. As sport has consistently shown us, bigger doesn’t always mean better.