'Players know who they are': RWC favourites ready for football-style penalty shootouts - but how would they work?

The World Cup draw has delivered four quarterfinals that are all shaping as tight contests – so might we see a RWC knockout game decided as never before?

Two of the World Cup finals – South Africa’s 1995 win and England’s 2003 victory over Australia – were decided in extra time – but what is the process if the competing teams are unable to break their deadlock?

Here’s the format for deciding winners the 2023 World Cup:

• If scores are level after the 80 minutes of regular play teams will have a five-minute break before starting two 10-minute halves of extra time, with a five-minute break in between.

• If the teams are still level after 100 minutes, there’ll be another five-minute break before a 10-minute period of sudden death. That means the first team to score any points in that period is the winner. The team that kicks off extra time (decided by a coin toss) also kicks off in sudden death

• If there’s no winner at the end of sudden death, then the match is decided by a penalty shootout. Unlike football, where the referee tosses a coin and the winning team chooses the end to kick to, the officials will make that call.

Here are the shootout rules:

• The referee tosses a coin to see who goes first.

• Only players who were on the field at the end of sudden death can take penalties.
• The captain nominates five players to take penalties and stipulates their kicking order.

• The kicks are to be taken from three positions, with position 1 in front of the posts, position 2 on the 15m line on the left-hand side of the posts and Position 3 on the 15m line on the righthand side of the posts. (You can see where the left and right foot strategy might come in here).
• The first kicker kicks from position 1, second from position 2, third from position 3, fourth reverts to position 1 and the fifth kicker kicks from position 2.

• If the teams are still level after five kicks, the competition continues on a sudden-death basis with the same order of kickers used again, running through the same order of kicking positions.

• Players have one minute to take the kick once they’re handed the ball by the ref.

• If a player suffers an injury during the kicking competition, he may be replaced by another player who finished the game.

Of course, this is a highly unlikely scenario – although it has happened a couple of times in professional rugby – and Ireland assistant coach Mike Catt acknowledged his team had at least given it some thought.

“We have spoken about it, the players know who they are. Andrew Porter, Tadhg Beirne, Dan Sheehan!,” he joked – naming the three least likely Irish candidates.

“The players are aware of it, it’s a long way to go and with the golden point you’d like to think one side would take their opportunity.

Richie Mo’unga would be All Blacks’ first choice. (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

“The players who are on the pitch know who they are, we just have to hope they put it through the middle.”

The first penalty shootout in professional rugby happened in the 2009 Heineken Cup semifinal between Cardiff and Leicester.

That was a different format – with kicks taken on the 22 metre line in front and similar to football where all players had to cycle through before players had a second kick. As it happened Leicester won 7-6 after Wales flanker Martyn Williams missed the only kick of the shootout.

The process was widely criticised, with commentators saying it was unreasonable to expect that teams would contain a number of players with goalkicking ability.

“In rugby union only three or four players are ever required to put boot to ball in a meaningful way, so it is ludicrous that a game should be decided by emphasising that particular skill,” wrote Brendan Gallagher in the Telegraph. 

The most recent example of a shootout as decider came in 2022 when Toulouse advanced to the Champions Cup semifinals with a penalty shootout win over Munster. But that format also differed from this year’s World Cup.

Each team had to nominate three players to take two attempts each from different positions.

Ben Healy (twice) and Conor Murray missed for Leinester as Toulouse’s kickers Toulouse trio Antoine Dupont, Romain Ntamack and Thomas Ramos won it 4-2.