Closing the gap: Can we make rugby a truly global sport?
While everyone will be getting excited about the prospect of either the Springboks or the All Blacks lifting their fourth RWC, personally this fact irks me and not just for the obvious reason of being a bitter Englishman. For a sport to have had ten global tournaments but only four winners seems highly uncompetitive. Soccer had a similar result in their first ten tournaments but they still achieved five different winners with two tournaments only having thirteen participants. They even managed to increase this number to eight in the ten that followed. After hearing the news of the RWC growing to twenty four teams I decided to take a look into how this could play out for the future of Rugby within these emerging nations and what they should expect at the next and following tournaments.
One metric I’ve used to measure the competitiveness of emerging nations in the RWC is the points difference per tournament between the lowest and highest performer. We can see here that the competition became closest exactly after the decision to grow the tournament from sixteen to twenty teams. Could this be a precursor for what we could expect at Australia ’27? One point to note is that the pools were still shallow, only having four team pools means the teams had one less game to collect or lose points, compared to now. The new format will return to the Pools of four but with six Pools in total, so while we still could see large scoring one sided games, there will be fewer, with the cream of the crop being skimmed off earlier with an opportunity for the third place in the pool to still progress to the round of 16. My previous suggestion for a tournament for all the remaining teams in my previous blog “Keep the Party Going” would still be valid and beneficial for the emerging nations as now the poorest performers will go home after only three games.
Another metric we could look at is how many teams are leaving the tournament without any overall points at all. Ultimately teams come to the tournament to win but gleaning draws and close loses while also racking up over four try’s will also be seen as positive outcomes to the emerging nations and also provide more useful competition for the stronger sides. Here we can see if we judge the very first RWC in ’87 with the same modern bonus point system we have never achieved a more equitable world cup since. After ’99 the two bonus point systems were introduced and the tournament has bounced between two - three teams leaving each tournament without a single point.
The introduction of four more teams into the next RWC will give the teams that left this RWC with a better chance at success, but what will that mean for those new teams coming in? Will we just have a higher number of teams leaving the tournament with no points and their pride in tatters? I don’t think so, as the tournament grows, so does the opportunity and the need for better competition below the RWC. Along with the release of the news of the RWC growing we also found out about the Nations Cup. Where essentially the summer tours and the Autumn internationals will be replaced with a larger competition between the teams from the six nations and the Rugby Championship (including Japan and Fiji). This has caused uproar with the other nations just below this level but I’m more hopeful that this is a step in the right direction. For a start, Japan and Fiji have come a long way to get this opportunity. It is not a gift but something they’ve earned through consistent results over nearly a decade of reliable performances.
image: Telegraph
Samoa and Tonga are not involved in the Nations Cup and I agree they shouldn’t be as they simply haven’t been good enough and I’m also certain that regular fixtures against teams out of their league won’t fix that. Has it helped Italy? Looking at their recent performance against France and New Zealand I’d say the answer is a clear no! The key to these teams improving is not just fixtures but meaningful fixtures. Yes, Samoa put up a great fight against England in the RWC this year but could they do this back to back? I doubt it. What they could do is play their neighbours Tonga and the likes of USA, Canada and Japan on a more regular basis, creating local rivalries, intense storylines and most importantly, close results, which will intern develop all nations involved. I want to see this and so does World Rugby, hence why they will be launching a revamped Pacific Nations Cup next year. This is the set up that I believe will offer a boost to the rugby in these particular emerging nations and not the initiatives to force the top teams in Europe to those remote parts of the globe to play one off tours that will be novel, impractical, unsustainable and uneconomical for everyone.
image: Worldrugby.com
The introduction of four extra teams into the RWC is a natural progression that has, in my opinion, taken too long. The FIFA World Cup has been gradually increasing its participation since 1982 and they’ve never had to reign it back since. I can even envisage a future where the RWC can involve thirty two teams but for this to happen the continental competitions have to be nurtured. This will also need some creative thinking due to pre-existing cultural, geographical and performance differences. Obviously South Africa shouldn’t be involved in the Rugby Africa Cup but maybe we should shrink that tournament to only subsaharan teams, reducing travel and therefore helping these unions conserve their finances for training and infrastructure. The same could be said for Asia Rugby who’s reach spans from the middle east to Japan. Wouldn’t it make more sense to divide these continents into smaller, more manageable governing bodies? Potentially grouping the north African teams with the middle east, then grouping India and her surrounding nations with the countries of South East Asia?
Are my ideas too simple, romantic or impractical? Potentially, but wasn’t William Webb Ellis when one day, with a fine disregard of the rules of Football, took the ball in his arms and run with it, thus originating the distinctive features of the game of Rugby? If we want to grow, we have to dare to think differently.