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2011 IRB Rugby World Cup


Sħãlïq™
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Who Will Win the 2011 IRB World Cup?  

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http://www.sportsillustrated.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Rugby-WCED2.jpg

 

September 9th - October 23rd

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/fixtures/poolstage.html

 

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/sha44/2011_irb_teams.jpg

 

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/

Edited by Shãłïq
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Pool A:

 

09/09 - 20:30 New Zealand 41 - 10 Tonga

 

10/09 - 18:00 France 47 - 21 Japan

 

Pool B:

10/09 - 13:00 Scotland 34 - 24 Romania

 

10/09 - 20:30 Argentina 9 - 13 England

 

Pool C

 

11/09 - 15:30 Australia 32 - 6 Italy

 

11/09 - 18:00 Ireland 22 - 10 USA

 

Pool D:

 

10/09 - 15:30 Fiji 49 - 25 Namibia

 

11/09 - 20:30 South Africa 17 - 16 Wales

 

http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/home/fixtures/poolstage.html

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The English will dominate.

 

England and Scotland on October 1st is going to be the game that decides Pool B. England's beaten Argentina and I think Scotland will as well, and I don't see England losing to the pair of Romania and Georgia, as well as those two countries have developed their rugby programs over the last few years.

 

The RWC this year is going to be fantastic when it gets to the knockout stages. The overall quality is absolutely tremendous, all of the top twenty teams in the world are in this tournament and countries like Russia, Georgia, Canada and Japan have pushed their programs into where they need to be in order to be competitive. Of course, they're likely never going to be too competitive with the All Blacks, SA, the Wallabies, etc. But it's that middle of the order, between spots 9 and 15 where rugby is going to get extremely competitive between now and 2015 when it's back again.

 

That brings to me to this point - I definitely believe the RWC should have included that three teams from each pool go through and give it a 12-team wildcard knockout stage. The top four teams in each pool get a bye into the quarterfinals, but with that level and talent increasing by the year, doesn't it make sense to see if Canada (likely to be the third place team in Pool A) can challenge a team like England? What about Samoa, ranked 10th in the world, in this years group of death with South Africa and Wales, two top-six teams in the world, playing a notably weaker USA team? It just makes too much sense not to implement it, and both 2011 and 2015 would've been great opportunities to try. Giving the best teams in the world the benefit of the doubt is understandable because of the beatings they can put on these teams, but if I was Australia, I wouldn't want battle tested Samoa or Wales anyways.

 

If they went to this three-team advancement idea, it would probably be Pool A v. Pool D, Pool B v. Pool C in order to get away from any potential rematches. Any world cup should be all about flavour and you shouldn't have to play a team twice until you're into the finals anyways. If they were to go to this idea, the match-ups would probably look something like:

 

Byes: New Zealand, England, Australia, South Africa.

2nd place: France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales.

Qualifiers: Canada, Argentina, Italy, Samoa.

 

France v. Samoa - Awesome game.

Canada v. Wales

Scotland v. Italy

Argentina v. Ireland

 

If you look at those match-ups, the real upset potential is Samoa against France who I think wouldn't match up tremendously with the Samoans. The rest are likely to stay the same anyways, but it's just the competitive factor.

 

Here are my rest of the tournament predictions.

 

Australia v. Wales - Australia

England v. France - France

South Africa v. Ireland - SA

New Zealand v. Scotland - NZ

 

Those would be absolutely tremendous games.

 

Australia v. France

South Africa v. New Zealand

 

I think we're looking at an All-Oceanic final, All Blacks taking it all. They need to, it's home soil.

 

I am high as hell right now and it took a long ass time to write all of this out. I was so paranoid of losing this all and all of my thoughts. And no one will likely read this. I love rugby.

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Also, Canada plays France tonight. I'm not expecting much, but I think we can keep the score respectable. If we somehow beat the French I wouldn't even care about the rest of the RWC. A high profile win like this would really give a shot to the popularity of the game here.

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