My ideal 10 team 2026 World Cup tournament

[England87]

I was nerding out at work and came up with what I think is the perfect tournament for the 2026 10 team World Cup.

I have assumed the obvious that France & the Cookies qualify so I seeded all the nations based of current world rankings into pots and then randomly drew the teams to get 2 pools of 5.

I would congest the pool stage to 4 weeks, not ideal but this gets the show run and done in 6 weeks. Union has done it for several world cups and mid week games would be great for the broadcasters.

The big changes I have made is having the Cup held across Australia, Fiji, New Zealand & Papua New Guinea. I think this is the time to take advantage of the domestic development in PNG & Fiji plus their ability to host televised fixtures.

I have thrown the slightly 'who gives a f**k' games into double headers and added what I believe to be reasonable attendence predictions *IF* it is marketed properly. Check it out

2026 OCEANIA RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD CUP​

A
AUSTRALIA (MAJOR HOST)
PAPUA NEW GUINEA (MINOR HOST)
ENGLAND
SAMOA
LEBANON

B
NEW ZEALAND (MAJOR HOST)
FIJI (MINOR HOST)
TONGA
FRANCE
COOK ISLANDS


ROUND 1

AUSTRALIA V SAMOA (Including Opening Ceremony) LANG PARK, BRISBANE 50,000
NEW ZEALAND V TONGA MT SMART STADIUM, AUCKLAND 28,000
FRANCE V COOK ISLANDS* *NEWCASTLE STADIUM, NEWCASTLE 15,000
ENGLAND V LEBANON* *NEWCASTLE STADIUM, NEWCASTLE 15,000

ROUND 2

PAPUA NEW GUINEA V ENGLAND PNG FOOTBALL STADIUM, PORT MORESBY 14,000
FIJI V COOK ISLANDS NATIONAL STADIUM, SUVA 10,000
AUSTRALIA V LEBANON PERTH OVAL, PERTH 16,000
NEW ZEALAND V FRANCE RUGBY LEAGUE PARK, CHRISTCHURCH 12,000

ROUND 3

TONGA V FRANCE* *WESTERN SYDNEY STADIUM, SYDNEY 22,000
SAMOA V LEBANON* *WESTERN SYDNEY STADIUM, SYDNEY 22,000
AUSTRALIA V PAPUA NEW GUINEA NORTH QUEENSLAND STADIUM, TOWNSVILLE 20,000
NEW ZEALAND V FIJI WELLINGTON STADIUM, WELLINGTON 17,000

ROUND 4

AUSTRALIA V ENGLAND SYDNEY FOOTBALL STADIUM, SYDNEY 36,000
NEW ZEALAND V COOK ISLANDS WAIKATO STADIUM, HAMILTON 12,000
PAPUA NEW GUINEA V SAMOA PNG FOOTBALL STADIUM, PORT MORESBY 14,000
FIJI V TONGA NATIONAL STADIUM, SUVA 12,000

ROUND 5

PAPUA NEW GUINEA V LEBANON PNG FOOTBALL STADIUM, PORT MORESBY 12,000
FIJI V FRANCE NATIONAL STADIUM, SUVA 10,000
TONGA V COOK ISLANDS* *MT SMART STADIUM, AUCKLAND 28,000
ENGLAND V SAMOA* *MT SMART STADIUM, AUCKLAND 28,000

SEMI FINALS

SEMI FINAL 1 - A1 V B2 LANG PARK, BRISBANE 45,000
SEMI FINAL 2 - B1 V A2 MELBOURNE RECTANGULAR STADIUM, MELBOURNE 25,000

FINAL

WORLD CUP FINAL - STADIUM AUSTRALIA, SYDNEY 75,000

 

[Last Week]

Ideally, yes this is the format that they would go with, but it's going to be the exact same as 2008 with the super pool.

Pretty sure I saw an article from the IRL last year which said that it would be an 18 match tournament, which is the exact same as 08. Your proposal is a 23 match tournament.

The only plus side with this format is that now, Tonga, Samoa and sometimes Fiji are pretty competitive, so pools B and C will have some genuine competitors in it.

And given it's being run by the NRL, I wouldn't be shocked if PNG have a strong campaign.

 

[England87]

Ahhh well that sucks

 

[Perth Red]

Id go (for blockbuster crowds)

AUSTRALIA (MAJOR HOST)
FIJI (MINOR HOST)
ENGLAND
LEBANON
FRANCE

(All games in Aus with Fiji playing all games at home sponsored by Aus govt)

B
NEW ZEALAND (MAJOR HOST)
TONGA
PAPUA NEW GUINEA (MINOR HOST)
COOK ISLANDS
SAMOA

(all games in NZ and PNG)

 

[titoelcolombiano]

Lebanese games at Belmore, tap into the community and look to get 18k crowds for their games. NZ, Tonga and Samoa are a must in a pool together in NZ.

 

[Ideas Man Stephen]

Too long we have been starved of quality match ups in a WC, instead settling for group games of little relevance and interest to the tournament.

Look at all the amazing games we never got to watch in 2022 because of the structure. There was no Aus v England; England v Tonga; England v NZ; Aus v Tonga; NZ v Tonga; NZ v Samoa. They would have to be some of the tastiest matchups international RL could deliver, and we skip them all because of an ill considered tournament structure.

Instead of buggerising around with wasteful matches like England v Greece and NZ v Jamaica, let’s organise the tournament so we get to see all the best nations playing all the best nations.

I would love to see the weaker nations still represented, but participating against nations of a similar standard.

2022 SF’ists auto qualify for four of six places in the Super 6s stage.

Prelim’ Knock Outs stage (played over two weeks immediately after GF)

Rd 1: Nations 5 - 20 Knock Outs (continental opponents)

Rd 2: 8 Winners of Rd1 play each other in four Knock Outs fixtures.

Rd 3: 4 Winners Rd 2 play each other to find two successful qualifiers to join the 2022 WC SF’ists in the Super Sixes.

Super 6s
Two qualifiers join the 2022 WC SF’ists for a 5 week round robin. This way we see the six best nations in the world (likely to be Aus, NZ, England, Sam, Tong and 1 other) all play each other over 5 weekends for the best standard of 15 matches RL can deliver.

No semi finalists, top 2 of Super 6s round robin move straight to a WC Final.

 

[ouwet]

Belmore will be out of action as the centre of excellence is being built.

 

[adamkungl]

Aside from the obvious that cutting to 10 was a dumb idea and it should have at least been 12 - the super pool idea isn't a total bust, if you have 3 pools 1 will obviously be unbalanced - as long as they don't copy 2008 verbatim which was wildly unfair and unbalanced with the top 3 in pool A all going through.

Should be something like
Pot X - Seeds 1 2 3
Pot Y - Seeds 4 5 6 7
Pot Z - Seeds 8 9 10

Then semi-randomly* (can place some deliberately for ideal ticket selling matchups) allocating to pools like:
Pool A - X Y Y Z
Pool B - X Y Z
Pool C - X Y Z


Each team plays 3 games, with a cross pool B and C game. Top 1 from each pool goes through with the 4th being the team with the best record across the combined pools (wildcard)

Going through this exercise we have
Pool A - Australia Samoa Fiji Lebanon
Pool B - England PNG France/Jamaica
Pool C - NZ Tonga CookIsls/SouthAfrica