could see something like this

group1 aus, nz, eng, fra
group2 wales, scotland, ireland, russia, lebanon
group3 fiji tonga samoa png usa

top 3 group 1 straight to semi finals

winners of group 2 and 3 play off to make 4th semi finalist

10 countries playing for 1 semi-final place? God I hope not!!

how else would they work it, throw eng, aus and nz into 3 seperate groups and see landslide scorlines??

then again, the onion brigade don't seem to care about the smaller nations being on the end of cricket scores in their world cup

Even more controvertial, but worth discussing. what about the curtain raisers being a 9s competition featuring sides lower down the international food chain. Cheaper to bring a squad of 12 thus more achieveable??????

Here we are looking at USA/Russia (if not in the main cup), South Africa, UAE, Greece, Norway, Italy, Serbia, Czech, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Morocco, Malta, Belgium, Ukraine, Portugal, Sweden, Japan, Suadi, Pakistan, Nuie, Tokelau, Hungary, Panama, Cuba, and Denmark. (AND BEFORE YOU MOCK, they all have official listings on the RLEF site)
These MUST all be self financing and submit guarantees to be here - this I admit is the really hard bit!!!!! But there is enough invites there to get some interest in the space of 3 years of fund raising????

I'd go for 8 teams... the big 3, plus 5 qualifiers.

2 groups of 4, semi-finals, final.

Yes, its boring, but I think it'd make it a more presitigious competition with bigger games and less whipping boys and it'd give the none big three teams something to aim for, i.e. qualifying. Also, something for host towns and cities to be proud of and want to host it.

Still, 14 teams... we've learnt lessons from the 2000 RLWC, lets have games in summer in places like West Cumbria, Oldham, Keighley and reasonably sized venues outside the 'heartlands'...

Its hard to come up with a good format for 14 teams. The best I can think of is split the top 8 ranked teams into two groups with 3 teams going into the quarter finals from them, then teams ranked 9-14 make up the groups 3 and 4 with the winners going into the quarter finals. So it would probably look something like:
group 1 aus, eng, tonga, samoa
group 2 nz, france, png, fiji
group 3 wales, ireland, usa
group 4 scotland, lebanon, russia

Actually it's not that hard, especially if you make it similar to 1995. Two 4-team groups based in England, a 3-team group based in Wales and another 3-team group based in France. Two teams advance from each of the 4-team groups (the winners straight to the Semi-Finals) and one each from the 3-team groups.

Split the Super Pool teams from the last World Cup between the two 4-team groups. Examples:

Group 1 - England, Australia, Fiji, Ireland
Group 2 - New Zealand, PNG, Lebanon, Scotland
Group 3 - Wales, Samoa, qualifier 1
Group 4 - France, Tonga, qualifier 2

Quarter-Finals

A Group 1 runner-up vs. Group 3 winner
B Group 2 runner-up vs. Group 4 winner

Semi-Finals

C Group 1 winner vs. winner B
D Group 2 winner vs. winner A

Final winner C vs. winner D

Do they really?


So a country that actually has a league and produces homegrown players shouldn't be allowed 'nowhere [sic] near the comp'?

really happy with the increase in numbers from 10 to 14, thats brilliant

it will be the last 10 teams from our WC, + lebanon and wales.

maybe usa and one of the pacific islands teams who missed out to round it out

giving wales auto entry is v.important to go along with the development of the crusaders

yeah thats how i think they will structure it

you dont want to see mismatches, thats the lesson learnt from our WC.

Russia? USA?

just used them as examples

Either Rhinofox or big picture's are the best ideas by far.
Think I'd rather see a quarter final myself though

They need to get it finalised as soon as possible though.
Tickets should be on sale at club games and in club shops at least a year before the actual world cup.

Russia are good enough to contribute club teams to the Challenge Cup.
USA should (fingers crossed) have a fully professional league by then - in which case it would be madness to not have them in the World Cup.


The 2009 Lebanon national squad (20 players) had a grand total of 4 players from Lebanon, the rest from suburban clubs from NSW. Also, Russia beat Lebanon 80-0 last time they met in 2008.