8 Team World Cup

[southwalesrabbitoh]

There should only be 8 in the World Cup; them being Aus, New Zealand, PNG, Fiji, Saaamoa, Tonga, England and France.

 

[The Great Dane]

Why?

Reducing the amount of teams that can participate in the WC seems like a step backwards to me.

First of all it's harder to gain funding from governments if they don't see any way for the sport to showcase their country on the world stage, so limiting the amount of teams in the WC to 8 teams seems dumb enough without restricting which eight countries can participate in the WC on top of that.

And on top of that, how are any of the lower national teams going to develop if they never play any games? The WC provides nations with plenty of reason and opportunities to play games against nations from all over the world, not only in the WC it's self but in the qualifiers and friendlies to prepare for the qualifiers or WC, etc.

If you remove that incentive then they'll only play if there's cash in it for them, and lets be honest the only national RL teams that are regularly pulling in the big bucks ATM are AUS, NZ and ENG, so since they stand with nothing to gain but bragging rights and an empty pocket most nations will simply stop playing unless it's a game against one of the a fore mentioned teams, and how often do you think AUS, NZ and ENG will play against national teams that will suck due to both being unable to pay their players, not have any incentive for more experienced players to risk injury by playing for them and not have much if any experience playing together as a team since they only play so rarely.

We are only just starting to fix some of those problems and it seems to me that your suggestion would only exasperate all the problems we are trying to fix.

 

[alien]

i think it should be 16 teams. 4 groups of 4. play everyone in your group once. top team in each group plays in the semi finals the week after. the 2 winners of the 2 semi finals play in the final the week after. all done in 5 weeks

 

[hutch]

Dumbest post ever. Next.....

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

16 is way too many, quality not quantity. If 16, you'll have huge mismatches within groups. Have to have a group containing Australia along with either England or New Zealand. Concentrate for the nxt few yrs on developing Fiji, Saamoa, PNG and Tonga. The number of players in France is goin up due to the Catalonia Dragons, so concentrate there too, 16 teams is ridiculous, deluded mate; you're in cloud cuckoo land. 3 group matches, 2 semi-finals, over in 5 weekends.

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

As R Crowe said in St Helens a few weeks ago, it's club football that gonna take RL around the world not international football, he's right, I think he wouldn't mind seeing the back of the WC altogether, at least I want something every 4 years. And 8 teams is what's realistic at the moment. Quite frankly sport in 3rd world nations like the Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, Philippines, even Serbia and South Africa, it's pointless until they are stable and admit in Russia's case that they should join the EU.

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

Dumbest post ever. Next.....

Hahahaha.

Anyway, it should be about developing the FOMO concept, that is, 'fear of missing out.' We build a WC where there are sell outs at EVERY match, so then people and governments will be falling over themselves wanting to be part of it, if we can't sell-out every stadium is Aus during a RL WC then we have a problem.

Erin Molan said on the Footy Show last week that of we can't get 50k to watch the Rabbitohs v Roosters this week then we have a problem. Well we "only" got 28k, so obv. in her opinion rugby league has a problem.

Canterbury v Parramatta got a bigger crowd than the Rabbits v Chooks, I do think we have an issue.

 

[langpark]

i think it should be 16 teams. 4 groups of 4. play everyone in your group once. top team in each group plays in the semi finals the week after. the 2 winners of the 2 semi finals play in the final the week after. all done in 5 weeks

I agree, 16 teams is perfect, four groups of four. I hadn't thought about only the top team of each progressing, interesting idea. But it is a WC, it only happens once every four years and I think it's a bit unfair on all the other nations, the minute they say they're in Australia's (for example) group, immediately knowing they won't pass the group stage. Play one of the group stage matches mid-week and the tournament only lasts a month.

Of course, you'd have seeded teams, something like this:

Pot 1: Aus, NZ, England, France
Pot 2: Tonga, Samoa, Wales, PNG
Pot 3: Fiji, Scotland, Ireland, Italy
Pot 4: Lebanon, USA, Russia, Canada

 

[sharkies9]

Why not the USA? They finished in the top 8 of the last World Cup.

 

[bazza]

There should only be 8 in the World Cup; them being Aus, New Zealand, PNG, Fiji, Saaamoa, Tonga, England and France.

If you have an 8 team world cup the participating countries should be:
1. The previous winner
2. The host nation
3. Euro Qualifier 1
4. Euro Qualifier 2
5. Asia-Pacific Qualifier 1
6. Asia-Pacific Qualifier 2
7. Repechage Qualifier 1
8. Repechage Qualifier 2

Euro qualifing tournament to include UK, Ireland, Europe, Lebanon, UAE, Africa, North America
Asia-Pacific tourament to include Australia, NZ, Pacific Islands, Asia

3rd and 4th place from each go into play offs for last 2 spots

 

[ParraEelsNRL]

Hahahaha.

Anyway, it should be about developing the FOMO concept, that is, 'fear of missing out.' We build a WC where there are sell outs at EVERY match, so then people and governments will be falling over themselves wanting to be part of it, if we can't sell-out every stadium is Aus during a RL WC then we have a problem.

Erin Molan said on the Footy Show last week that of we can't get 50k to watch the Rabbitohs v Roosters this week then we have a problem. Well we "only" got 28k, so obv. in her opinion rugby league has a problem.

Canterbury v Parramatta got a bigger crowd than the Rabbits v Chooks, I do think we have an issue.

Why, the rabbits and roosters are nowhere near as popular as parra and the dogs.

 

[roughyedspud]

we'll be having a 8 team "federation cup" inbetween world cups from 2019...

 

[thorson1987]

Dumbest post ever. Next.....

I beg to differ

http://forums.leagueunlimited.com/showthread.php?t=376974

 

[Rodney]

I don't get the 8 nation figure.
There's usually only 3 names brought up when we're talking about when contemplating serious challengers.

Maybe (very big maybe) 4 now considering how close Samoa got to pushing over the Kiwis and Poms.
But any team headed by Ben Roberts is going to need a miracle to get to a final let alone win one, its very generous to include them anywhere near the contenders circle.

Still you've got 4 essentially junk teams playing for places rather than to win.
Totally invalidates the whole blockbuster edge this competition had.
The teams after the top 4 have been historically lucky to keep scores within 30 of the top 3.
How are you going to sell out PNG vs Aus, France vs NZ, Wales vs England ect. ect. ?

Even when we have the best 4 nations competing in a closed tournament we cant ensure sellouts.
The 2014 4nations was the best attended to date but we still had only 71% of the seats available used.

+ if you're hoping for a more competetive tournament you're probably not even close.
You're still in for a similar amount of blowouts whether there are 8 or 16 teams.
Australia beat the USA (rank 10 in the world) 62-0 and then next week demolished (an admittedly shoddy) Fiji 64-0.
But even when Fiji we're playing decently well they lost by 30 odd.
The rank 5-8 are not that much better than the 9-12 and then beyond that there are still some very solid teams: Tonga, the Cook Islands, Lebanon and Canada.
They can compete with each other but they aren't much chop against the top 3.
More of these teams means more competitive games as the 'big 3' become a proportionately smaller part.

Overall I really don't see any advantage to making the RLWC smaller.

 

[ParraEelsNRL]

southwalesrabbitoh wouldn't be far from having his very own thread if someone was mean and nasty, it could be quite an interesting reading tho :lol:

 

[alien]

Why, the rabbits and roosters are nowhere near as popular as parra and the dogs.

the rabbits are, but the roosters aren't. 2 very supported teams playing against each other will normally get a larger crowd than 1 very supported team vs 1 team that isn't well supported. if there were as many roosters there as rabbitohs fans there would have been atleast 40k

 

[alien]

Quite frankly sport in 3rd world nations like the Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, Philippines, even Serbia and South Africa, it's pointless until they are stable and admit in Russia's case that they should join the EU.

none of those teams would make top 16 except maybe lebanon

the last world cup was 14 teams and it was fine
Australia
Cook Islands
England
Fiji
France
Ireland
Italy
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Samoa
Scotland
Tonga
United States
Wales

if 2 more teams qualified maybe it would be out of canada, lebanon, jamaica

the weaker teams would probably only get smashed once, and would probably be competitive in the other 2 games. it's only once every 4 years. it's good to see how they are all progressing on the world stage

 

[langpark]

Quite frankly sport in 3rd world nations like the Ukraine, Russia, Lebanon, Philippines, even Serbia and South Africa, it's pointless

Never mind the ignorance of the comment for a second, he then goes on to say this...

Concentrate for the nxt few yrs on developing Fiji, Saamoa, PNG and Tonga.

:lol:

When exactly did PNG become a wealthier nation than any of those nations he mentioned at the start?

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

Never mind the ignorance of the comment for a second, he then goes on to say this...

:lol:
When exactly did PNG become a wealthier nation than any of those nations he mentioned at the start?[/QUOTE]



Obviously Saaamoa, Tonga and Fiji as they have many players from there in the NRL, NSW Cup or QLD Cup and PNG is the only country on the planet where RL is the national sport.

 

[southwalesrabbitoh]

southwalesrabbitoh wouldn't be far from having his very own thread if someone was mean and nasty, it could be quite an interesting reading tho :lol:

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.

Also, another guy has come up wit the phrase rake-back instead of play-the-ball. And Phil Caplan an English journo said on Back Chat (Premier Sports) think it was, the we need to come up with a new name for the sport, as at the moment we're promoting rugby union as people use the word rugby for rugby league a lot of the time.

Some others on this forum think we should not have a WC at all (don't think that R Crowe thinks we should bother with a RLWC). So I'm not the only one who disagrees with many of you on this thread.

What name should we come up with instead of rugby league? Instead of just criticising me, come up with ideas. Anybody can just throw out criticisms.