Rugby World Cup scheduling

Following on from Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu's twitter rant about Samoa only getting 3 days rest before the Wales game, do we think the IRB should change the World Cup scheduling? The only way to avoid midweek games would be to extend the tournament by a week, and have 5 weeks for the pool stages to be completed.

As an example, we could have had (using this World Cup as a template - enlarge the spoiler tag to see):

Spoiler:

There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways (the current and the "proposed"). Notably I think the tournament can lose a bit of momentum if it was stretched out, it's a long tournament as it is. However, no-one will be forced to play twice in a week. Would people welcome a change in the scheduling in 2015? Or is it fine as it is?

(*I thought I'd leave the EFS topic to discuss EFS in particular and players using Twitter, and I felt this topic deserves a discussion thread of it's own.)

Both Georgia and Samoa notably tired at around 60 minutes today. They both had made very few changes to the their teams since the last matches.

It is not fair on teams to have such uneven scheduling.

We'll never know how much difference the short turnaround made but it is clearly not an even playing field. Something needs to be done before 2015.

Samoa knew they had a very short turnaround but they still played their first XV against Namibia.
Surely by doing that they believed that momentum rather than rotation would have been the best policy.
Samoa did not look any better or worse in the last quarter of todays game than they did against Namibia.
But after all that yes we should all have a level playing field.

Either the tournament needs to be extended so that no-one has a short turnaround, or everyone should have at least one short turnaround. It's supposed to be a World Cup, not a "them and us" cup.

Rollmeister wrote:Either the tournament needs to be extended so that no-one has a short turnaround, or everyone should have at least one short turnaround. It's supposed to be a World Cup, not a "them and us" cup.

They wont extend it more likely they will shorten it and only invite the top tier sides.

I wouldn't put anything past the IRB, but I think the RWC should be more inclusive, not less.

Lets look at NZ & USA as a working example.

NZ have 20 rest days inbetween pool matches with 6 full days being their shortest turnaround period.

The USA have 13 rest days inbetween pool matches with 3 full days being their shortest turnarond.... twice.

If you get an injury whatever it is 3 days is unlikely to be enough time... nor is a change in game plan if results don't go your way.

The same does not happen in the FIFA world cup and it shouldn't happen in the RWC either. The difference is that multiple TV stations will bid for the rights for the FIFA world cup.... the RWC is a different story..TV rules and the IRB will do anything it says to increase viewers.

All teams should have 1 short turn around match, means the squads have to be managed well and makes topping your pool a bit trickier. Exactly what we need to make the tournament more interesting.

Rather then cutting teams which would be the worst thing to do!

fa0019 wrote:Lets look at NZ & USA as a working example.

NZ have 20 rest days inbetween pool matches with 6 full days being their shortest turnaround period.

The USA have 13 rest days inbetween pool matches with 3 full days being their shortest turnarond.... twice.

If you get an injury whatever it is 3 days is unlikely to be enough time... nor is a change in game plan if results don't go your way.

The same does not happen in the FIFA world cup and it shouldn't happen in the RWC either. The difference is that multiple TV stations will bid for the rights for the FIFA world cup.... the RWC is a different story..TV rules and the IRB will do anything it says to increase viewers.

I hadn't looked at it this closely. Thanks. This is really unacceptable. Crapping on one of the weaker teams doesn't help anything.

As opposed to cutting teams, would it be possible to extend the tournament so that there was 24 teams? ie 6 teams in a group, and therefore an even schedule?
Yes by allowing 26 teams, the new 6 would be on the end of some cricket scores, but as we've see so far at this World Cup, the minnows are progressing very well. So could be beneficial to the game overall.

Or SA have an 8 day break between there last two games,Samoa 5 days for arguably there biggest game.
I thought after the 1987 RWC,it was a week turn around.
IRB did the schedudling NOT NZ as was implied above,IF they have 4 day turn arounds ALL teams should have to go thru it.

Actually, the scheduling shouldn't be that diffficult to even out. Now I know this is somewhat simplistic, but here is my Sunday evening analysis, enhanced by the magic of Boddington's:

First pool match in RWC 2011: 9 September.
Last pool match in RWC 2011: 2 October.
This is a total of 23 days for 5 rounds of pool play.
Extending this to a total of 25 days give a consistent rest period of 5 days between matches.
Each tem plays in only 4 rounds, so each team will have one 10 day break.

To me, this is not too bad and is very fair.