[uPool A[/u:

[iAustralia
England
Fiji
Ireland[/i


[uPool B[/u:

[iNew Zealand
France
Samoa
Scotland[/i


[uPool C[/u:

[iItaly
Tonga
USA
Wales[/i

[uPool D[/u:

[iPNG
Cook Islands
Canada
Lebanon[/i


Top 3 from Pools A and B, plus top one from each of pools C and D, progress to the quarter finals. This would be the same system as we have at present, except I would give PNG a better chance to qualify for the Quarter Finals by putting it into Pool D.

Having two teams from North America and one from the Middle East should make for a more lucrative TV contract if it is done properly this time (i.e TV contracts for USA, Canada, Italy, and Middle East).



For 2021 the RLIF should be working to have a tournament hosted by England and France, with 20 or 24 teams.

The additional teams to be considered for inclusion, after competitive qualifiers, then would be:

Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Serbia, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Latvia, South Africa, Malta, Greece, Jamaica, Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia.

But the RLIF and RLEF would need to devote resources to developing the games in these countries starting in 2014.

It will certainly help France's stature and French public interest in the World Cup if Toulouse is part of Super League in 2015, with a third French club (probably Avignon) in 2018. Moreover plans should be made to prepare for an Italian Super League club, and perhaps one from another European country, by 2021 at the latest. This will help create more powerful and authentic European teams (not just heritage teams) and make the media and the public in Britain and Europe take the Rugby League World Cup more seriously.

DO you not have a life for god sake this world cup is not over yet your

Lebanon lol...

Yes Lebanon, do you not know? They drew 19-19 against Italy in the qualification stage for this WC.

Unbeaten in qualifying for the last two World Cups, yet managed to miss out on both tournaments.

Waw. They should be there this year, along with Canada or Jamaica.

If you have 4 groups of 4, then seeds

1-5-9-13 = Group A
2-6-10-14 = B
3-7-11-15 = C
4-8-12-16 = D

QF1. Winner A v Second D
QF2.Winner B v Second C
QF3.Winner C v Second B
QF4.Winner D v Second A

Winners QF1 v QF4
Winners GF2 v QF3

Current rankings would be....
Australia, Wales, Ireland, Italy
NZ, PNG, Tonga, Russia
England, Fiji, Scotland, Serbia
France, Samoa, USA, Canada.

Australia v USA
NZ v Fiji
England v Tonga
Samoa v Italy

Australia v Samoa
England v NZ

No need for a super group or lopsided qualifiers from groups.

BTW...fully aware the seedings/rankings will change before then, but just using them as they are now.

I think that system is pretty unfair.

I would seed into 4 categories and then draw them out. I don't think it's fair to just to just go off rankings. For example, why should top ranked team play a 'stronger' team in their group than the team ranked second?

Or maybe switch it around:

1 - 8 - 12 - 16
2 - 7 - 11 - 15
3 - 6 - 10 - 14
4 - 5 - 9 - 13

Actually I've seen what you have done with the QFs. Nevermind...

lol, yeh seeing Canada or Jamaica get belted 110-0 will be great for the RLWC! Check out the Italy squad that played Lebanon compared to the one playing in this RLWC, might explain why they were equal in 2011 and not comparable in 2013. www.rugbyleagueproject.org/match ... banon.html

lol, yeh seeing Canada or Jamaica get belted 110-0 will be great for the RLWC! Check out the Italy squad that played Lebanon compared to the one playing in this RLWC, might explain why they were equal in 2011 and not comparable in 2013. www.rugbyleagueproject.org/match ... banon.html

Lebanon probably has the strongest domestic scene outside Aus, NZ, UK, France and PNG.
They have a two comps - one of them a university based competition that has many players who went to school in the Rugby League heartlands of western Sydney. They have also spread into the high schools of Lebanon, and now, after over 10 years of development, have many, many domestic players who play at a high standard.
One of the odd happenings in recent years is that one of the clubs in America was started by Lebanese Uni students who moved from Lebanon to do post graduate studies in the US.
Lebanon is one of the few countries producing players from their domestic comp who could compete in the world cup, but they also have access to large numbers of players from league heartlands. Increasing numbers of Lebanese kids have taken up the game in Western Sydney over the last 10 or 15 years because of the success of players like Hasim el Masri and Robbie Farah. They have nearly as many 'heritage' players as Italy and many of the PI teams to call on if needed, but they have much stronger domestic players than all those countries.

I'd go as far as saying that if we were handing out world cup places on a merit based system where we took all factors into account, Lebanon would be picked well ahead of Italy, Samoa, Tonga and Cook Islands, and probably slightly ahead of USA.

BEST WORLD CUP WE'VE EVER HAD AND PEOPLE WANT TO CHANGE IT!! TYPICAL OF RL FANS! STICK TO WHAT WE'VE JUST DONE! 14 TEAMS AND SAME FORMAT!

Sorry about caps lock.

We want to change it for the better. Lebanon and Canada would add a lot ot the tournament.

Lebanon in particular would have hundreds of thousands of potential fans in the Sydney metropolitan area. You could count on at least 15,000-20,000 Lebanese fans attending any Lebanese game in Sydney. Assuming that the Lebanese matches were telecast throughout the Middle East, Lebanon playing in the World Cup would also attract enormous interest throughout the Middle East. It would then have an enormous impact on the growth of the game there. So the inclusion of Lebanon in the 2017 World Cup would appear to be more than desirable -- it is a necessity.

........and for Jean's next topic of discussion, he will lay down his plans for the 40 team 2060 world cup, complete with likely seedings and domestic development plans for rugby league in mongola and vietnam.

The country is called Mongolia, and it like Vietnam it is spelt with a capital letter at the beginning.

In any case it is a pity that you have nothing constructive to add to the discussion.

I believe Russia should be the team we should fast track if possible.
League has been played in Russia for the best part of 30 years now, and at one stage they claimed as many as 10,000 registered players.
They even played a game against USA at Moscow Olympic stadium in front of a decent sized crowd only about 10 years ago.
They have dropped off the radar in the last 5 years or so, but Russia should get any help we can give them to qualify for the next WC.

I agree with trying to help Russia, and Ukraine. But the game's situation there is nowhere near as advanced as it is in Lebanon. Because of the Australian emigre connection, and good assistance from the RLEF, rugby league in Lebanon has become well established. It can become a competitive nation over time and, as I pointed out in an earlier post, have a huge impact on growing our game in the Middle East. So I would put fast tracking Lebanon as the highest priority of the RLIF for 2017.

For years the promise of a competitive Russia has been dashed. One power and status hungry former boss of the Russian Federation used his funds to build up his own team, Moskow Lokomotiv. That wrecked the domestic competition.

Then later, once the bad guy was removed, the Russian competition flopped because they got no financial support from the RLIF. With the IRU backing a Russian candidacy for their World Cup, Russian rugby league teams and players defected to rugby union.

We should be able to rectify that situation now. But the RLIF must become proactive, get someone on the job (supervising Russia together with Ukraine and perhaps Serbia full time) and especially supervise the dispersal of RLIF funds.

If that was the case then the European Championship in football would not be expanding to 24 teams, in fact they would be going back to 8.

This current format is necessarily contrived to make the tournament a success. The hope (should be expectation) is that it won't need to be as contrived because we have more teams who can make a decent fist of it when included. Suddenly, when you have more teams, the teams that look like minnows now (e.g. Wales) will be in the middle of the pack rather than the bottom, so expansion doesn't necessarily mean more tonkings..

Quote ="JB Down Under"lol, yeh seeing Canada or Jamaica get belted 110-0 will be great for the RLWC! Check out the Italy squad that played Lebanon compared to the one playing in this RLWC, might explain why they were equal in 2011 and not comparable in 2013. www.rugbyleagueproject.org/match ... banon.html'" The Italy side is very similar to their World Cup Team so I fail to see your point. Sure there is the odd change but: Minichiello, Calegari, Mantellato, Ghietti, Nasso, Ciraldo, Riethmuller, Falcone and Tramonte are all in the squad. Vic Mauro was named in the initial RLWC squad but pulled out. That's over 50% of the team playing in this World Cup.

Quote ="JB Down Under"lol, yeh seeing Canada or Jamaica get belted 110-0 will be great for the RLWC! Check out the Italy squad that played Lebanon compared to the one playing in this RLWC, might explain why they were equal in 2011 and not comparable in 2013. www.rugbyleagueproject.org/match ... banon.html'" The Italy side is very similar to their World Cup Team so I fail to see your point. Sure there is the odd change but: Minichiello, Calegari, Mantellato, Ghietti, Nasso, Ciraldo, Riethmuller, Falcone and Tramonte are all in the squad. Vic Mauro was named in the initial RLWC squad but pulled out. That's over 50% of the team playing in this World Cup.

To be fair the comparrison with football doesn't really work. The 16 team euros is the most competitive competition. The increase is purely for commercial reasons.

lol, Lebanon has 5 teams in its competition. FIVE! The number of eligible Lebanon players in NRL or SL is miniscule. They cannot put out a compeitive team against anyone in this world cup and you think in 4 years they are going to dramatically change that? How? The biggest problem for the RLWC is the lack of competition when it gets past the pool games. Reality is we are only going to see one competitive game out of the 4 qtr finals and one in the semis. Keep the comp as is and work on strengthing what we've got so we might see more competition in the finals.

That's simply not true.
They have a 5 team University based comp, where many of the players are young men who learnt to play in Australia - and they also have a 5 team non University based comp, where many of the players are ex university players and also young players from the high school based comp.
For the last 3 or 4 years they have run a highschool comp, and that is providing players too.
Because there is a large smattering of players who learnt the game at highschool in NSW or in club sides in NSW, all ten senior sides in Lebanon are made up of guys who play at a pretty high standard.
There are also hundreds of guys with a Lebanese background playing League in Australia. Maybe only half a dozen of them are currently playing firstgrade, but lower grades in Sydney are full of Lebanese names, and some country sides, Cessnock in particular, have had Lebanese players for decades. Cessnock has had Lebanese players going back to the 1950s.

In the world cup qualifiers Lebanon murdered two of the sides and drew with Italy. The fact that they ran up a massive score against Serbia using mostly there domestic players shows these guys actually know how to play the game.

I have no doubt playing other amateur teams they are the strongest. Playing against teams full of SL and NRL FT pros they will get mullered. And I would say Lebanon are the strongest by far of the nations that didn;t qualify so where is your 16th team and how weak will they be!

We have 14 teams that are competitive in the pools this time ( no guarantees next time as who knows who will or won't be eligible for these nations from NRL/SL, qtr finals that are not yet competitive for the majority. At best we could go to 15 and include an easy beat like Lebanon but i just don't see the benefit to the tournament.

I can only think of Robbie Farah, Tim Mannah, Josh Mansour and the Robinson brothers that played in the NRL this year that could play for Lebanon. I don't know anything about NSWC/QLDC players though, and none spring to mind in SL. So there's a tiny foundation, but if you put Lebanon in one of the weaker groups they could do ok.

There's plenty of ways to make a 16 team comp as close as this years WC, for example you could do something like:

Top 4 ranked/2013 semifinalists - Groups A/B
Bottom 4 ranked - Groups C/D
Middle 8 - Randomised into the rest of the places.

1A v 3B
2B v 1C
2A v 1D
1B v 3A

QF1 v QF2
QF3 v QF4

SF1 v SF2

But obviously there's a reasonably large set of systems around as good as that, probably some better.

I would have thought for a 16 team WC would be 4 groups of 4 with the top 4 teams in the world seeded into each of the four groups.

Then the other 12 teams randomized into the 4 groups, with the top 2 of each group going through, they may use this system for future WCs.

EG.

A = Aus, scotland, cookies, ireland
B = Eng, USA, Tonga, Wales
C = NZ, canada, france, italy
D= Samoa, Fiji, PNG, lebanon

A1 (Aus) v D2 (Fiji)
B1 (Eng) v C2 (Italy)
C1 (NZ) v B2 (Tonga)
D1 (Samoa) v A2 (Scotland)

Most likely would still end up with the same but with more teams competing and a better mix of games.