The host, however, has been blighted by recent injuries to fly-half Romain Ntamack, second row Paul Willemse, prop Cyril Baille and center Jonathan Danty, though some of those may be able to return later in the tournament. South Africa’s confidence will be high after convincing wins against Wales and New Zealand last month, while France has the home advantage and defeated Australia, Fiji and Scotland in its warm-up games. However, an oddity of the draw, which was made three years ago, means that two of those four teams will be knocked out of the tournament before the semifinals. Ireland are the number one side in the world, the grand slam champions, and you’ve got France who are an incredible team.” “If you were to list the favorites to win the World Cup, it’s hard to ignore South Africa, they’re the champions. Now, he wants to open the door for more people to come out There will also be a third-place playoff on October 27 between the two losing semifinalists.įormer Ospreys and All Black rugby player Campbell Johnstone pictured during the Heineken Cup fixture between Ospreys and Toulouse at the Liberty Stadium in Swansea, UK in December 2012.įormer Ospreys and All Black rugby player Campbell Johnstone, Swansea - Phil Rees/ShutterstockĪs a rugby player, Campbell Johnstone ‘pushed away’ his sexuality. In the semifinals, the winner of quarterfinal one faces the winner of quarterfinal two and the winner of quarterfinal three faces the winner of quarterfinal four. The same happens with Pools C and D (quarterfinals one and three) on the other side of the draw. The top team from Pool A then faces the runner-up in Pool B (quarterfinal four) and the winner of Pool B faces the runner-up of Pool A (quarterfinal two). The top two teams from each pool then qualify for the quarterfinals and compete in a knockout format.
Chile is the only team making its debut at the World Cup after defeating the USA by a single point across two qualifying matches last year.Įach country plays the other teams in its pool once. The likes of Uruguay, Namibia, Romania and Portugal are less experienced contenders at the top of the sport and seem unlikely to progress beyond the pool stage. Ireland, defending champion South Africa, France and New Zealand are, in that order, the top-ranked teams in the world, and behind them Australia, England, Argentina, Wales and Scotland are all established forces in the game.įiji has enjoyed a strong build-up to the tournament, defeating England for the first time ever last month, while Italy, Georgia, Japan, Tonga and Samoa have been competing against – and sometimes beating – the world’s strongest rugby-playing nations for decades. Many of the nations competing are tournament regulars.
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The tournament will be aired on Stan Sport in Australia, Sky in New Zealand and ITV and S4C in the UK.Ī full list of international broadcasters is available here on the Rugby World Cup website.Ī total of 20 teams have qualified for this year’s Rugby World Cup and they will compete in four pools of five teams each. In the United States, which has failed to qualify for the tournament for the first time since 1995, matches are being broadcast on NBC. The Stade de France will host the opening games between France and the All Blacks, two quarterfinals, the two semifinals and the final, while the Stade de Marseille is the only other venue hosting knockout games. The Stade de France will host this year's Rugby World Cup final.
Matches will be staged at nine venues across nine different cities: Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Paris, Saint-Etienne and Toulouse. Organizers anticipate that 600,000 fans will travel to France for the tournament and announced last year that a record 2.6 million tickets had been made available for the tournament. It comes at a time when the country is in the sporting spotlight with Paris hosting next year’s Olympic Games. With kick-off looming, here’s everything you need to know ahead of rugby union’s showpiece event.įrance, which previously staged the Rugby World Cup in 2007, was voted as the host of this year’s event in 2017 ahead of bids from South Africa and Ireland. It will mark the first of 48 games taking place at nine venues across France, with the tournament concluding at the same stadium on October 28. The 10th edition of the Rugby World Cup gets underway on Friday as host France faces New Zealand at the Stade de France in Paris.Īs curtain-raising games go, this is about as big as it gets, pitting two of the best teams in the world against each other in front of a likely sell-out crowd of 80,000.
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