Eddie Jones says that the draw for the 2027 Rugby World Cup was ‘balanced’ despite the outcry of a potential quarter-final between the Springboks and All Blacks.
New Zealand has been drawn in Pool A alongside Australia, Chile and Hong Kong China, while the back-to-back champions South Africa join Italy, Georgia and Romania in Pool B.
If the competition’s two most successful teams were to top their respective pools and win their round of 16 encounters, they would meet in the last eight, a fact that several fans and pundits have slammed.
World Rugby have copped plenty of backlash for the manner in which the draw was done, which allowed for the top two-ranked teams in the world, at the time of the draw, to meet so early in the competition.
“Clearing the decks early”
Springboks captain Siya Kolisi and head coach Rassie Erasmus weren’t too bothered by the possible meeting with New Zealand in the quarter-finals, with both stating that you have to win all the knockout games anyway.
Jones was joined by ex-Wallabies and Reds head coach Ewen McKenzie on the Rugby Unity podcast, where they discussed the draw.
“In the quarter-finals, there are a bunch of potentially key games. So, yes, everyone talks about New Zealand v South Africa, but Argentina v Ireland is another potential one. So, you’re clearing the decks early,” McKenzie said.
“There are a lot of teams that are competitive at the moment. So, you got more than it’s very hard just to line up two years out, four teams into the semi-finals.
“There’s going to be some pain somewhere. That’s the nature of the tournament. So you just have to run with it. That’s the point of the tournament. I don’t think you can manipulate the result unless you just hand-pick it based on the rankings and just distribute the top. But where do you start and stop with that? You can just take the top 24 teams and place them into a tournament, but you’d still get problems.
“We’re still going to have issues in two years’ time because the rankings will change again between now and then; that happens every time because we go early. I don’t see an easy pathway into the semis anyway.”
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Old-fashioned view
Jones agreed, explaining that the competitiveness of international rugby right now means that quarter-finals are no longer ‘easy’ match-ups as they were in previous World Cups.
“I find it a bit mystical. When you get down to the last eight, they should be tough games, shouldn’t they? What do we expect?” he said.
“I think that’s a bit of an old-fashioned view. You go back probably 15, 20 years in the World Cup, the quarter-finals weren’t difficult games, but now you know the depth of World Rugby has increased, and that’s what we want.
“So we want games that really test opponents. I think it’s fantastic for the tournament. Obviously not potentially fantastic for Ireland, who I imagine are the ones who’re complaining.”
There is an argument that rugby should adopt seedings like Tennis when drawing the pools for the World Cup.
World Rugby uses bands instead, with the 2027 draw consisting of four bands of six nations, with the teams divided up as per their world rankings.
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Seedings won’t work
Jones explained that the rankings are too volatile to adopt the seeding system with World Rugby needing to do the draw further in advance than the FIFA World Cup.
“We’ve got the bandings; they give you that balance in the draw, but with anything, you’re going to have a few discrepancies,” Jones said.
“I wouldn’t like to see us go down the seedings because the seedings are too temporary.
“We play another set of games next weekend, and the rankings of the teams change again. It’s not like tennis, where they do it over a long period of time, and if you get an injury in tennis, you can still be ranked in the top 20 for a period of time, but that’s not the case in rugby.
“I don’t think that kind of system can work in rugby.”