Welcome to the first of a new series on The Runner Sports where we are going to be pitting two of writers against each other on a hot topic in rugby. We’d then like you to let us know what your thoughts are on the topic in the comments below.

This week, Craig Grideli and Paul Bains will look at the proposal to expand the Rugby World Cup from 20 teams in Japan to 24 teams four years later in France. Would the inclusion of four more Tier 2 teams help expand the game or would extra teams just mean lopsided contests?

To consider the idea of Rugby World Cup expansion, one must first consider the purpose of the World Cup. Every four years, the best international teams across the globe come together with great fanfare and spectacle to compete for the world championship. Why?

I submit that the World Cup serves two purposes. The first purpose is, of course, to determine the champion. It is a sport after all. The World Cup is the only existing format for letting nations prove that their 23 are the best in the world.

The second purpose is to celebrate the game. The World Cup is more than just a competition, it’s an event. It’s a time for bringing together fans from every place the game is played to appreciate together the strivings of the men and women on the pitch. We use the word “community” a lot when describing rugby. The quality of the rugby community is a point of pride and an important aspect of the global rugby scene. The World Cup is not only about international fixtures, it’s also about being part of something that goes beyond borders.

So we must ask ourselves if expanding the tournament from 20 teams to 24 would further these two purposes.

Global Championship

On the first, the answer seems straightforward. It would strain reason to argue that including more teams would somehow jeopardize the tournament’s ability to determine the best. In truth, it is exclusion and not inclusion that gives rise to that threat.

Now, let’s be practical. Teams 21-24 are not winning the World Cup. They likely aren’t winning a single match. The parity in World Rugby is such that teams outside the top 10 have little chance of beating those within. Only a handful of teams have anything more than a puncher’s chance of winning the Webb Ellis Cup. So one might say that the inclusion of four more teams will have no impact at all on determining the best team in the world.

That is a short-sighted view. Parity doesn’t grow on trees. A main ingredient in increasing parity is increasing experience. The fringe teams need experience against the best. They need to see and understand exactly what the best in the world do to win. Then, those lessons go home with them and spread to all the training facilities across various countries. They spread to youth rugby and the next generation will come up doing the things that will make their nation more competitive. Not to mention the economic benefits to the home union that go along with World Cup qualification (via sponsorship, etc.) and how they help parity.

So yes, expanding the World Cup to 24 teams in 2023 won’t make any difference in deciding the champion. But adding them in 2023 may help determine the champion in 2043, and that is the point.

Celebration of the Game

Weighing expansion in light of our second purpose is more challenging.

On the one hand, there is a clear benefit from expansion in that it means, if nothing else, four more nations to participate in the celebration. All else being equal, that argues for expansion.

Unfortunately, all else is not equal. The downside of expansion means that there will be tests that result in blowouts of epic proportions. The top teams in the world routinely beat teams between #10 and #20 by 50+ points. Who knows what would happen once we get into the 20s, but 100-point wins would not be a shock. At least at first.

People might reasonably argue that adding such lopsided fixtures makes a mockery of the game, rather than celebrating it.

Still, weighing the pros and cons, I would argue that expansion is a net gain when considering our second purpose. As mentioned earlier, the only way to promote greater parity is to allow the less competitive teams to get more top-level experience. Over time, that will mitigate the effrontery of the 100-0 win.

But, perhaps more importantly to me, having four more nations represented at the World Cup means that the World Cup is an event which hosts that much more of the global rugby community. So what if there are a few more blowouts? There are blowouts now. The additional blowouts would still represent only a small portion of the overall contests. If you assume blowouts against the top three teams of each pool, you’ve added 12 blowouts to the tournament. That would be only 10% of the total pool matches. But adding four more teams is a 20% increase in the nations represented. For me, even putting aside the long-term parity increases, that’s a trade I would make.

The Rugby World Cup should be run with two primary goals: find the world champion and celebrate the game. Expansion serves both. Maybe only marginally in the near-term, but with the opportunity for great long-term benefits.

The whole purpose of World Rugby is to be guardians of the game and in this day and age if you’re not growing you’re seen as dead. Sometimes, though, you need to be careful how you grow; weed killers for your lawn contain hormones to make weeds grow quicker. That kills them. We have seen something similar happen in Super Rugby where unplanned growth saw people fall out of love with the game.

Quality

People have very short memories and everybody was talking about how the Tier 1 to 2 gap had closed at the 2015 Rugby World Cup. That, though, was brought about by World Rugby pouring money into the development of the sides that had qualified for the Rugby World Cup. We only have to look back at the 2011 Rugby World Cup to see many lopsided contests. There were 10 games where Tier 1 teams scored over 50 points against Tier 2 opposition and Italy was one of the teams that managed that! In case you think that 50 points isn’t that bad, three of those games saw 80+ points scored.

I know that Japan will get called out. They lost 83-7 in 2011 to the New Zealand All Blacks and then beat the Springboks in 2015. That, though, took a lot of intensive investment in both money and games in a country that already had a professional league. That won’t be available to the extra four teams that people are suggesting should join.

The big argument for the expansion is to expand rugby around the world. So who would these four extra teams be that would spread the word? If we look at the world rankings, the next best teams that aren’t at the Rugby World Cup are Romania (eliminated from qualification due to ineligible players), Spain (eliminated from qualification due to ineligible players), Netherlands, and Hong Kong.

And the next three teams are all from Europe too. There are two issues here; first, the Rugby World Cup already is 40% European and if we were to add in these four teams then that would grow to 46% as things stand. So are we really spreading the sport going down that route?

Secondly, with two of those teams being disqualified from qualifying for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, there are serious questions about their administration. Should we be promoting teams before they have good governance to grow the game properly?

If we are to look for non-European countries to spread the game globally, then Brazil and Chile are the next in the world rankings. To be fair to Brazil, they held the Maori All Blacks to a 3-35 loss recently, however, the following week Chile went down 0-73. That’s a mammoth loss to what is effectively New Zealand’s third team. I’d suggest that Chile is a long way from being competitive enough to be at a Rugby World Cup.

If we check out quality from another angle and look at the repechage, Kenya gave up 150 points in three games. Yup, that’s an average of 50 points a game against Canada and two other teams that didn’t make it to the Rugby World Cup.

I’d suggest that the gap to the next four teams that people would like to see in the Rugby World Cup is just too big to bridge in the next four years.

Schedule

The other big issue with expanding to 24 teams is the scheduling and format to the competition. The Rugby World Cup is already “too” short and we have to have short turnarounds not allowing proper rest for players.

With a new global calendar agreed for 12 years after 2019, there is no possibility of expanding the window for the Rugby World Cup. I know that everything can be renegotiated but if the window were expanded we would descend into civil war with the European clubs.

So how do you add four teams? Currently, it’s seven games to reach the Rugby World Cup final. Do we go to four pools of six and squeeze in an extra game impacting player welfare? Do we have six pools of four with three pool games and four knockout rounds?

Assuming player welfare matters and we want to keep to seven games, then the best two teams from six pools of four would be joined by the two best third-place teams. Would that first round of knockout games hold people’s interest? There’d only be one maybe two games that weren’t obvious who was going through.

I think that we would be better off bringing four teams in to have their own round-robin during the pool stages. Then have the third and fourth-place teams go into a plate competition and the fifth-placed teams join the extra four for a bowl competition. This would give teams more games and get the next tier of teams ready for this level of competition.

Is Craig right that the expansion of four extra teams will help us see who is the best team in the world and enhance the celebration? Or is Paul right that the quality isn’t there and the scheduling complications are too high?

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Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.