Q&A session with the top men at World Rugby (The IRB before it was re-branded).

World Rugby chief executive Brett Gosper, Head of Rugby World Cup Alan Gilpin and Tournament Managing director Stephen Brown Q&A.

What are you overall thoughts on how the Rugby World Cup has gone so far?

Brett Gosper: "This has been a breath-taking pool stage. You can overdo the superlatives, but it’s been an incredible and compelling global celebration."

"We can look forward to the quarter-finals with great anticipation. In terms of it being the shop window for our sport, we couldn’t be happier with where we are as a tournament right now."




http://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/rugby-world-cup-2015-tournament-10246860

Could you make the font a bit bigger please, my eyesight isn't what it once was

At your age that's a tragedy. Shouldn't you be getting back to class?

There have been some exciting and absorbing games but skill levels are fairly poor. I think that's true of rugby in general. You look back at early footage (even as recently as 10-15 years ago) and, while players were slower and smaller, the basic skills were better. I guess in some ways being big and fast means you can be lazy in other areas.

As a plus point, both Australia and Argentina have lookes good at times with ball in hand (and NZ frequently do even when they're playing badly), but generally it's more about intensity and anything approaching total rugby. I guess that's a product of World Cup rugby and it will probably become even more conservative in the knock-out stages.

It always becomes more conservative in the knock-out stages.
Plus, you might say it was easier to be more skilful when players were smaller and slower. After all, if you had natural pace, you could shift around the slow boys. And if you were naturally big, you could drive through the small boys.

The tide has turned because the players in all teams are bigger, stronger and faster. That might suggest the game should be more entertaining and fast paced but it's obvious to me that it tightens up the space available instead. What rugby might need are bigger fields .

I am not a big fan of Gosper.

Some of the answers to the questions on the lay times between matches being unreasonable was completely evaded. Uruguay had three days between one game and the next, Fiji four, Wales five and many more in other pools.

Ah rest days are overated...didn't do much for us!

maestegmafia wrote:Alan Gilpin: We are confident this World Cup saw the fairest and most equitable match scheduling to date. 
That’s not to say it was perfect. There’s more work certainly to be done as we look forward to 2019. It’s a difficult problem fitting 48 matches into six weeks ensuring the big teams get through to the semi's and final. We had to hand out disproportionate bans to the diddy teams just to make sure, but thankfully, no-one has noticed.




This time around, the balance between Tier 1 and Tier 2 teams in terms of scheduling has been better than ever.
Japan, for example, had the most rest days in the tournament. What’s highlighted often is the short turnaround for some of the big games and what that means for the teams with maybe less resources.
We will absolutely review that again ahead of 2019.