4 day turnaround

These 4 day turnaround are completely unfair. You have to effectively play your B TEAM from the start giving the opposition a huge advantage.

Was this really necessary , cause i can see no reason why all the teams couldn't get 7 days like England. Just have a staggered start and run games 7 day apart ?

can someone explain why they disadvantaged some teams ?

Wasn't this massively argued, debated and discussed at the last RWC? What was the out come then?

5 teams in the pool means 1 team isn't playing. So you'd have to extend the pool by another week (increasing the costs for keeping the squad together) and you would still have teams with a two week gap in places or and two in each pool that play four in a row.

Ross Ford has played 142 minutes, Nel and Dickinson have played 110 minutes. All in a space of 4 days and will be inline to play another 65 minutes vs South Africa in 6 days time

Scotland are at the bottom of the list for days between games at 17. That's what has been dealt to us so we'll deal with it.

Said it many times before.

Easily solved.... change tournament to 16 teams, 4 groups, 4 teams.

However those who complain the most of the unfavourable draws are probably those who would lose out over the tournament reduction.
Its not simply tier 1 nations benefiting, NZ and SA have worse than average schedules.

Rugby is a growth sport. Playing matches at peak times on peak days in specific markets is necessary to make a profit, profits to use to fund world rugby funding of unions, projects, tournaments etc etc.

Its an inconvenient truth... but a necessary one.

What I couldn't understand was why there was no game on Friday evening??? That's prime TV time surely?! They could have put one game on Friday at least, and therefore afford someone an extra day rest.

The basic changes that were proposed was expand the tournament to 8 pools of 4 teams and have a second round before the quarter final like in football.  the alternate idea was to have 4 teams in 4 pools (like in 1987 and 1991).  

The first idea was ignored due to not having enough strong countries, the second because countries like Georgia, Uruguay and one of the island teams would of missed out.

It will change when we get more strong countries.  Realistically what other countries could we include if we added 12 more teams?

5 European - Spain, Russia, Portugal, Germany, Belgium
2 American - Chile, Brazil
2 Asian - Korea, Hong Kong
1 Pacific - Cook Islands
2 African - Kenya, Zimbabwe

A few of those countries have already appeared at world cups but I think were a long way off to be honest.

why wouldn't a 24 team comp work? 6 teams per pool so not an odd number

Japan is the most deserving of another look at the scheduling given their results and against who they achieved them.

I have to say I don't mind the short turnarounds per se, rugby is a more entertaining game when teams are tired and spaces start to open up and if fewer rest days achieves is a way of achieving that (shortening the in-game stoppages is another) then great. What ruins it is when one team is tired and the other isn't. So we want all teams in a pool having very similar schedules. That of course necessitates a creative solution to allow even-sized groups (reducing to 16 teams would suck).

dallym wrote:why wouldn't a 24 team comp work? 6 teams per pool so not an odd number

Too many games! That would be an extra game for every team in the pool stages and if they were to have equal rest periods the tournament would take over 2 months!

I agree with fa the finals should be 16 teams (4 x 4). The three games could be spread over three weeks so the TV companies could be kept happy. I'd also have a pre-qualifying tournament of 32 teams (8 x 4) to replace all the warm-up games and have them located globally.

The benefit of this is that the finals would be for the elite teams and require fewer stadia, thus opening up the tournament to more countries. The pre-tournament would also generate income and be located closer to home fan bases widening the game further.

yappysnap wrote:Wasn't this massively argued, debated and discussed at the last RWC? What was the out come then?

The outcome was that it wouldn't just be the little teams that got stitched up, hence Aus, SA, NZ and France having short turnarounds, only their second game was always against the weakest in the pool (Uruguay, USA, Namibia and Romania).

There's no "fair" system when you have odd number of teams in the pool, unless you only play weekends and have one team resting each week (under the premise that one week rest is sufficent and therefore two weeks rest is no significant advantage), however that would extend the cup to 8 weeks and you wouldn't have the same flow or momentum to the tournament as you do in the pools now. For example, you might play Thursday to Monday so still have games on most of the time, but you'll get teams not playing for two weeks and it feeling like the tournament isn't moving forward. The build-up would be ridiculous as well, imagine if this was England's off-week and Australia player their Uruguay game now instead of earlier and we had ANOTHER week of England/Australia build-up.

Just extend the World Cup by 1 week - problem solved - everyone gets a minimum of a 6 day turn around for every match.