A cast of George Gregan, Jonny Wilkinson, a frilled-neck lizard and Mad Max-style vehicles advancing through the Australian desert representing the different competing nations feature in the first official ad for the upcoming version of rugby’s biggest tournament.
A momentous occasion where, for six weeks, 24 teams will collide chasing the game’s biggest prize, and a proper leap of faith that will test rugby’s depth and real global spread with four more teams that we are used to seeing at the tournament.
After the draw was conducted recently, skeptics were aplenty.
Are there actually 24 teams that are “worthy” of playing in a World Cup?
Is rugby stretching its resources too thin?
Will this dilute the quality of the product?
To answer these questions, let’s first look at how other major sports handle their own World Cups.
Before Infantino’s unquenchable thirst for dollars meant that the FIFA World Cup will mutate into a hydra with 48 nations divided into 12 groups and three countries for 2026, football’s biggest tournament had 32 countries competing, out of 211 member associations, same as basketball and handball (this means that only 15% of the member nations can effectively qualify, meaning that just taking part is a proper achievement for many countries and something to be celebrated in its own right).
By comparison, World Rugby has 134 members, meaning that the same percentage of teams (15%) could qualify for 20-team RWCs, which has risen to 18% with a 24-team format.
In other words, rugby’s World Cup aligns with other major sports in regard to the proportion of member unions that take part out of the total number that actually play the sport.
All these numbers sound fine, but what do they translate to on the pitch? Is rugby a global enough sport to ensure that all 24 teams can realistically fight for the top prize?
Well, obviously not, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it unique to rugby union. In football, easily the world’s biggest sport by far, only eight nations have won the World Cup, while 13 have made it to the final since 1930.
Rugby Australia CEO Phil Waugh poses with the Webb Ellis Cup. (Photo by Brendon Thorne – World Rugby/World Rugby via Getty Images)
In basketball, it’s seven and 10 respectively (since 1950), while in handball it’s nine and 11 (since 1938).
Winning a World Cup in any sport is a hard thing to do, hence its appeal and feeling of exclusivity.
In rugby, only four teams have lifted the trophy, while five have reached the final (France is the only finalist to never have won the whole thing). With a considerably shorter World Cup history as the first only took place in 1987, it is not a bad record.
So, all these things considered, how do the teams competing in 2027 stack up? For the sake of this article, I have separated the 24 competing teams into four groups according to their strengths and realistic aspirations for the competition, which roughly align with the seeding bands used to establish the pools.
The first group includes six nations with legitimate aspirations of lifting the Webb Ellis trophy. Three of them have tasted success at the tournament: South Africa have won it four times, New Zealand has three, and England has one. France have reached the final twice, Argentina have been semi-finalists in three tournaments, and Ireland … well, Ireland will be looking to break their seemingly unbreakable quarter-final hoodoo.
These six teams are expected to breeze past their pool-play opposition and will likely use the first three matches to test their depth and build combinations with an eye on the knockout stages.
The second band is made up of teams that are just below the leading pack and will be confident of reaching the knockout stages at the very least as well as looking for an upset that can allow them to make a run for the semifinals.
Chief among them is twice-champions and hosts Australia, the formerly unpredictable and growingly consistent Fijians, the perennial almost-giant-slaying Scotland, a plucky yet still frustratingly inconsistent Italy (who have never made it out of the pool stages in the 20-team format), the struggling Welsh, and a Japanese side showing some topsy-turvy form of late.
It is with the third group that things begin to get interesting, as it hosts six teams in different stages of development which will provide excitement for the race to qualify for the knockout stages as one of the four best-third ranked teams.
Leading the pack is Georgia, long entrenched as the best European nation outside of the Six Nations but with no chance to join the big table, and a Uruguayan team that consistently punches above its weight and is ready to play in their sixth RWC.
They are joined by an enigmatic Spanish team that will finally return for the World Cup after qualifying in 2019 and 2023 but being disqualified for fielding ineligible players, a stagnated and crisis-ridden United States that failed to qualify for the 2023 RWC but made the most of the easier qualification process for 2027 (and face the daunting task of hosting the 2031 RWC), arguably the biggest rugby fairy tale story of recent years in Chile (playing in their second successive RWC after convincingly beating Samoa) and perennial participants and always physical Tongans, boosted by recently eligible former Wallabies and All Blacks.
Tempers flare between England and Samoa at the 2023 World Cup. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Lastly, band four includes a fascinating mix of have-beens, up-and-comers, and proper dark horses, offering a sense of intrigue and mystery to the competition.
There’s Samoa, a former heavyweight of the game that has played in all but the first RWC (getting to the knockout stages in 1991, 1995 and 1999) but that had to fight off a tough Belgium side to qualify for 2027, a Portugal side which lighted up the 2023 RWC and will be hoping to entertain the crowds, a Romanian side that has fell off its standing as the second-best non-6N European team and only qualified in 2023 as a consequence of Spain’s disqualification, an ageing Hong Kong side that will experience the ride of a lifetime by going to the RWC and facing the All Blacks and Wallabies, a Zimbabwe team that agonizingly beat Namibia to qualify for their first-ever RWC (and returning after 34 long years), and a Canadian side on a steady downward trajectory even before losing its only fully professional side in the Toronto Arrows.
So, what can we expect from this tournament? In the first few weeks we will see the inevitable blowouts, particularly as Band 1 teams face those in Band 4.
However, there will be tight matches and likely an upset or two, just as Uruguay beat Fiji in 2019, South Africa was dismantled by Japan in 2015, Tonga ambushed the French in 2011, and Argentina stunned France in 2007. It is important to consider that all teams that managed to qualify for this tournament did so by beating their direct competition and thus earned their place fair and square.
And although they may not be realistically looking to progress deep into the knockout stages, the goal of a World Cup is not just to decide which of the top six national teams is the best during the course of a few weeks, but to celebrate the progress that rugby has made around the world, and the fact that despite its many well-publicised troubles, it is still a game enjoyed by people around the world.
This means that beyond the top dogs there’s many, many fascinating sub plots at play. Australia will likely kick off the tournament against the All Blacks, while Chile and Hong Kong will both be looking to score some key points in order to attempt and qualify for the knockout stages.
All Blacks star Cam Roigard in action against the Wallabies. Photo: Getty Images
Italy and Georgia will clash in a mouth-watering game that the Georgians will be desperate to win, both to qualify for the next ground and to remind everyone that they are banging on the European elite’s doors. Argentina will face Fiji for group C’s top spot, in what will be their first game in 24 years.
In pool D, both Uruguay and Portugal will look to play the game of their lives to knock off Scotland and claim a spot in the last 16. Pool E sees a tight three-way fight for second place between Japan, the USA and Samoa, all teams that know each other well from the Pacific Nations Cup.
Lastly, pool F will see Tonga and Wales lock horns in a game that will probably decide who goes through as the second-placed team in their group.
So, what’s the takeaway? This World Cup will have something for everybody. Whether the team you support is looking to lift the Webb Ellis trophy, whether it goes in looking for an upset that helps them get a shot at the knockout stages, or whether they are counting the days to achieve a life-long dream of playing at the game’s biggest stage, you can sit back, open the beverage of your choice and enjoy what will likely be the best RWC to date.
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