Comments on: Rugby World Cup 2019: Pool Draw

By: JK

JK — Wed, 10 May 2017 19:51:07 +0000

Oh, right. Cheers for sorting that out. Shall we not bother then? Maybe get the lads to try bowls or something instead?

By: Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan — Wed, 10 May 2017 19:26:36 +0000

Its a moot point as England will get hammered by NZ in the semis. The end.

By: CRFC1874

CRFC1874 — Wed, 10 May 2017 14:00:35 +0000

Stand corrected!

By: Bill Burgess

Bill Burgess — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:56:06 +0000

I think we need to look at when and where England beat Argentina. When they play at home during our summer in the North they invariably play a weakened team.Not sure why however I think many of there players involved in super Rugby etc.Scotland also have a good record against them in Argentina. I don’t think England will have to many problems against them even at their strongest.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 10 May 2017 13:16:30 +0000

Really interesting thought about having the Pool draw this far out: there are a lot of teams – USA, Canada, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Romania in particular – who will consider it a realistic aim for themselves at the world cup to aim for getting 3rd spot in a pool and having a platform to build off for the next WC. We saw Georgia and Japan leapfrog other teams into 3rd place in their pool last WC and I know that avoiding qualification will be a tough battle in a lot of the pools.

Although anything can happen, surely what this means is that the teams that qualify are hoping to be against the least secure automatically qualified teams (in this case, perhaps Italy and Georgia?) who they can target as being able to beat and secure that 3rd place.

In terms of this draw, this leaves something really interesting in terms of Pools C and D and the Americas qualification: after all, if you offered Canada, and USA (probably Americas 1 and 2) either Pool C or Pool D in terms of the automatically qualified teams they’d almost certainly take Pool D as they would see themselves as having far more chance of beating Georgia to 3rd than Argentina, England or France. Does that therefore mean that they will try to qualify as “Americas 2” rather than “Americas 1”? That’s an interesting possibility as I’m sure it’ll be in the back of their heads as they play the qualifying matches that they don’t particularly want to be “Americas 1”? In the same way the play-off or repechage winner would probably have a better chance against Scotland, Japan or Italy than against any of the pool C top 3?

By: Orion

Orion — Wed, 10 May 2017 12:36:55 +0000

Good job England have all that player depth! No fear of not making it through on top but they’ll need to do a good job of rotations during the groups to keep the squad fresh for the knock outs.
If it is USA and Samoa to complete the group, that might be the beefyist group ever!

By: Jeremy Denton

Jeremy Denton — Wed, 10 May 2017 12:35:28 +0000

I’m sorry, is that a sense of humour failure I see?
Lighten up would You?

By: Ten Ton Donut

Ten Ton Donut — Wed, 10 May 2017 12:26:08 +0000

Actually Argentina have beaten England 4 times before…

By: Stesco

Stesco — Wed, 10 May 2017 12:18:07 +0000

Grow up.

By: CRFC1874

CRFC1874 — Wed, 10 May 2017 11:40:34 +0000

I really don’t think England’s group is that hard.

They have never lost to Argentina to date and France aren’t that great, I would expect the group to be rounded off by The USA and Samoa so qualification for the second round is all but assured in my eyes.

By: Leon

Leon — Wed, 10 May 2017 11:01:37 +0000

Far more even distribution than last time round but England still in the closest thing to the group of death with France and Argentina both improving could be tricky by the time the tournament rolls around

By: niall

niall — Wed, 10 May 2017 10:48:07 +0000

playoff winner is between Europe 2 and Oceania 3 (at the moment Spain and Tonga)

The repechage is between Oceania Cup winner or Asian Championship winner, playoff looser, Africa 2, Americas 3.