The 2027 Australian Rugby World Cup will expand to 24 teams, four more than have participated in the competition since 1999, World Rugby announced on Tuesday, following a vote by the organisation’s General Council.
The expansion is part of a package of measures that will be ratified on Thursday at the general meeting of the body that oversees sport worldwide, and which also provides for a new six-monthly competition between the top 10 teams in the rankings and two invited teams . .
The new World Cup format foresees a division of the 24 teams into six groups of four teams, instead of the four groups of five teams adopted in recent years.
The change could reduce the length of the competition from seven to six weeks, reducing the group stage to three matches for each team, despite the introduction of an extra round before the quarter-finals.
So for the round of 16, the top two from each group and the four best third-placed teams qualify directly.
According to World Rugby’s statement, “qualification details” for the 2027 World Cup in Australia will be determined following a “thorough review of France 2023 and consultation with national and international federations”.
However, the possibility of directly determining the fourth-placed teams in the France 2023 group stage, which would already qualify Portugal for the next edition of the World Cup, will have ‘fallen’, a source connected to the process told the Lusa agency. .
Currently, the World Cup automatically qualifies the top three in each group, with the remaining places distributed among the various international federations’ qualifying tournaments, including Rugby Europe.
World Rugby’s General Council also backed the organisation’s desire to hold the draw for the competition’s group stage “as late as possible” to “better reflect global competitiveness” in the tournament.
The draw for France 2023 took place in December 2020, almost three years before the start of the competition, and resulted in the seeding of the top four ranked teams at the start of the competition, Ireland, South Africa, France and New Zealand . the same side as the ‘key’ of the quarter-final.
According to the president of World Rugby, “the decision to expand the 2027 World Cup to 24 teams is a logical and sensible decision”.
“If we want to become a truly global sport, we must create relevance, opportunity and competitiveness to attract new fans and capture value. The 2023 World Cup demonstrated the passion and potential that exists among the top 10 or 12 countries, if we think big. and inclusive,” said Bill Beaumont, quoted in the organization’s statement.
The Rugby World Cup is the sport’s largest international competition and has been held every four years since the first edition in 1987.
The first three editions were played by 16 teams, before the number of participants was expanded to 20 in 1999 and remained unchanged since then.
Portugal qualified for the competition in two editions, in 2007 and 2023, both held in France, after recording their first win this year against Fiji (24-23), in the final meeting of Group C.
Source: DN
