Australia’s home Rugby World Cup campaign will kick off against debutants Hong Kong China rather than bitter rivals New Zealand, who also feature in the same pool.<\/p>\n
Chile return for a second World Cup to round out Pool A at next year’s hotly anticipated tournament, the first hosted in Australia since 2003.<\/p>\n
It will be Australia’s first match against the South American nation.<\/p>\n
“It’s incredibly exciting to have the schedule locked in for the Wallabies’ pool fixtures, ahead of what’s going to be a truly special tournament here in Australia next year,” Rugby Australia chief executive Phil Waugh said.<\/p>\n
The Wallabies will be rated favourites alongside the All Blacks, second on the World Rugby rankings, to finish in the top two of Pool A and advance to the knockout stage.<\/p>\n
Four of the six third-placed teams from the group stage will also progress.<\/p>\n
Should Australia place second in their pool, they will face the Pool F runners-up \u2014 one of England, Wales, Tonga and Zimbabwe \u2014 for their first knockout clash.<\/p>\n
Win their pool, and Australia would face the third-placed team from Pool C, E or F in the round of 16.<\/p>\n
Perth will host Australia’s first pool match on October 1 next year, before the All Blacks clash in Sydney on October 9, then the match against Chile on October 16 in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
2027 Rugby World Cup Pools<\/p>\n
Pool A: New Zealand, Australia, Chile, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
Pool B: South Africa, Italy, Georgia, Romania<\/p>\n
Pool C: Argentina, Fiji, Spain, Canada<\/p>\n
Pool D: Ireland, Scotland, Uruguay, Portugal<\/p>\n
Pool E: France, Japan, USA, Samoa<\/p>\n
Pool F: England, Wales, Tonga, Zimbabwe<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s home Rugby World Cup campaign will kick off against debutants Hong Kong China rather than bitter rivals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[89838,5844,10751,64,63,760,15131,588,85,2995,2500],"class_list":["post-454648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-89838","tag-abc-sport","tag-all-blacks","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-rugby-world-cup","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-springboks","tag-wallabies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}