The Rugby League World Cup is almost upon us \u2013 as is a change in format and a reduction in teams which has led to a unique method of group stage fixture formatting.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As we know, the men\u2019s tournament will comprise of just ten teams this year, down by almost half from four years ago when 16 nations squared off in England for the right to be crowned world champions.<\/p>\n
Ten is clearly a difficult number to have a group stage campaign with, though it was the number of teams that took part in the 2008 tournament, which again was Down Under.<\/p>\n
But the formatting is different this time around \u2013 with it going straight to the semi-finals after the group stage. Here\u2019s how it all works.<\/p>\n
Group A<\/p>\n
The simplest part of the equation comes with Group A: which is populated by reigning champions Australia, New Zealand, Cook Islands and Fiji.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty straightforward here; like any other four-team group at any other tournament \u2013 including the last World Cup. Three games for each nation, one against every other team in the group \u2013 and the top two progress straight through to the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
The other two go home. Easy so far, right? Well, this is where it gets a little bit different..<\/p>\n
Groups B and C<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s World Cup has what is called an \u2018inter-group\u2019 format for the remaining six teams.<\/p>\n
They have been placed into two three-team groups, B and C. However, while in 2008 you played the other two teams in your group, this time around, you actually play the OTHER three teams from the other group, and nobody in your own group. Still with us?<\/p>\n
Take England as an example. They\u2019re in Group B with Lebanon and Samoa. But they will actually never play either of those two teams until the final at the earliest.<\/p>\n
Instead, England play the three teams in Group C: Tonga, France and Papua New Guinea. The same is true for all six teams.<\/p>\n
Then at the end of the group stage, the top two teams from all six go through to the semi-finals. For the other four, it\u2019s curtains: which in all eventuality means just one defeat is going to be enough to end your hopes of a place in the last four unless there are a peculiar set of outcomes with some shocks.<\/p>\n
No pressure for England and Tonga then \u2013 who meet first up in what already feels like a shoot-out for the semi-finals.<\/p>\n
The semi-finals<\/p>\n
The two teams who qualify from Group A are placed onto opposite halves of the draw for the semi-finals. The winners of the inter-group B and C take on the team who has finished second in Group A, with the winners of that group facing the runners-up of the inter-group format.<\/p>\n
The two winners then meet in the final at Brisbane on November 15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rugby League World Cup is almost upon us \u2013 as is a change in format and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-794822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}