Why are the RLWC quarter finals so embarrassing?
Especially with even pools ( a 4x4 format) I don't think they'd be too bad.
Instead of Aus + NZ playing outsider minnows they'd be playing the best of the minnows.
Who aren't going to threaten but would keep things respectable.
The CWC quarter finals were all won by big margins, its ok for teams to show form and class.
And if your definition of 'pointless' is that Australia/New Zealand/ England are bound to win it than why bother holding a WORLD CUP?
A world cup is an event designed to celebrate the international game.
Where every concievable nation comes together to play in one massive, continuous tournament and its possible (however unlikely) that anyone could win.
All these nations are going to enter qualification anyway, why not include them into the cup proper?
If you withdraw places then these countries lose a host on incentives, and protracting the cup will lead to less exposure for the sport as a whole.
You also lose TV revenue from the reduced amount of games, and you will lose whatever ticket sales any nation from below 9th would provide (even if they are minuscule).
Finishing 4th no longer is all that impressive in a field of 8 rather than 14 or 16.
You diminish the tournament as a whole, for really no concievable benefit.
Oh, I guess you can avoid the Daily Tele writing a couple mean articles about how unbalanced it is. Which will be replaced by articles detailing how irrelevant it is, how pointless it is and how its in crisis because its effectively been cut in half so obviously there must be something dreadfully wrong there.
There really is no benefit, and you effectively have to sacrifice the whole intention and spirit of a 'world' cup to try and mould it into a somewhat palatable tournament for people who can't stand any sort of inequity in sport.
Who aren't going to tune in untill the semi's regardless because the pool stages are effectively gonna be the same as they were in 2013 minus the two minnow pools.
Cutting the tournament back after its most successful iteration seems completely idiotic
That's the best argument I've ever come across I think.
But if IMO 16 is the right number for a RU WC then we can't have anywhere near that number. I saw an Irishman write that he would rather lose by 100+ with a team made up of people mainly with Irish accents than with English and Aussie ones, think he mentioned something like 90% of the players should have Irish accents or were born there. And I agree. So that also puts out Scotland and Wales.
So I'm coming back to concentrating on the P Islands. Lets start there, so at the moment only two European countries can be in a RL WC, that's obviously only England and France. How many in the USA side had American accents or were born there? Very very few. And during the 2013 WC the England v Ireland match at Huddersfield was pretty much a non-event. I think it could have put more people off RL than attracted, saw one guy from Sheffield who was attending his first RL match say as much, he was at Huddersfield.
Also if you have 4 groups of 4 that means you can't have a 'blockbuster' to start the tournament. The fact is RU have far more teams who are closer together in terms of standard. 8 seems a reasonable number for a RL WC.
However, what I really think is that only 4 teams should play international matches (for now at least), those being Europe, New Zealand, PNG and Australia. And have tours instead of a Tri-Series. So this year NZ would tour Europe, and play the Catalonia Dragons, Wigan, Saints, Hull FC and Leeds and obviously the 3 Tests at Hull, London and Wigan. Though I would replace the one at Wigan with one at Toulouse.
So no RLWC. But have an 8 team Club World Cup as R Crowe suggested, the top 4 from the NRL v the top 4 from the ESL. 2 groups of 4, seeded. 2 from each comp. in each group. 5 weekends.
So Group 1 from last yr would have bn, Sydney Rabbitohs, Wigan, Warrington and Penrith.
