Playing numbers in the US, particularly at youth level actually have exploded in the last 5 years or so. Junior rugby barely existed there before that. That growth will pay dividends at the top level over the next decade. Just as importantly the sport has had growing commercial success in that same period. Both 7’s and 15’s.

This article is overly pessimistic. The average winning margins at the world cup have been declining consistently since 2003. There was an initial widening of the gap between tier 1 and tier 2 following professionalism, but it’s narrowed slowly but surely over the last 10. For the gap to close further there needs to be more meaningful and regular tier 1 vs tier 2 matches between world cups.

Yep and now World Rugby will be trialling a similar points system in a number of international competitions during 2016. Basically the same as the NRC but 6 points for a try and 2 for the conversion instead of 5 and 3.

SANZAR is usually pretty proactive about this sort of thing so hopefully they’ll bring it into Super Rugby as well.

There won’t be an extra week. The clubs won’t allow it and they have increasing power. Plus, I think it’s great having mid week matches, it creates a real feast of rugby. The solution is to have 4 team pools. Brett Gosper has already flagged expanding the competition to 24 teams. When that happens the format will be the same as the 1990 soccer world cup. 6 pools of 4 followed by a round of 16 including the 4 best 3rd place getters. Then you can have 6 day turnarounds for everyone, play games pretty much every day during the pool stage and finish the tournament in the same length of time as now.

I think it’s pretty disappointing. The ticket prices are too high and from all reports there’s been almost zero promotion of the game in Chicago. The ARU had a profit share agreement with USA Rugby but aren’t going to have any sort of windfall now. And they’ve made little effort in assisting in promoting the game besides sending Honey Badger and Nic White over for a couple of days a few weeks ago. Even their training base for the last week has been a couple of hours outside of Chicago so they haven’t been doing any local media or PR stuff.

20-25k last I heard. Could get to 30 if they get a decent walk up.

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Good to hear the shield’s been officially announced. Looking forward to seeing what it looks like. Now it just needs to develop a nickname!

Not sure about the Rising putting it up for grabs in their first away match…hopefully teams will get more possessive of it in future.

With the current world rugby points system of course going for penalty goals is a basic of rugby. With the NRC points system it isn’t, and it wouldn’t be at a higher level either. Going for 2 when you have an opportunity to go for 8 is a waste most of the time.

I think this is a good thing, I don’t really enjoy watching penalty goals and I think most people are the same. If teams take it as an opportunity to infringe more then they get yellow cards. I think it worked really well in the NRC last season, that it will work really well this year, and that it would work really well at higher levels.

It just shows that under these variations you still have many strategic options available to try and win. The difference is that no matter how you play you must score tries to win matches. Can’t just rely on getting territory and kicking penalties to create scoreboard pressure.

Thanks again Brett. Great news that the challenge shield is going to happen! Big fan of this competition and the law variations. There’s 2 good reasons to have the law variations in my opinion.

1. It encourages teams to play a high skill game with an attacking focus – which is how Australian teams must play to maximise support and our chances of winning at higher levels (and that doesn’t mean there’s no strategic variation!)

2. It’s a reasonably high level testing ground for law changes, which makes it more likely for changes to happen at World Rugby level. Basically it gives them data and evidence of the effect of changes at a fairly elite level. If these variations contribute to changes at a global level, which reduce the number of penalty goal attempts and the amount of time wasting in the game then I’ll be happy.

Yep…they’ll do well to keep within 50 of anyone. Especially as everyone will know the pool could come down to points difference. England have the biggest chance of destroying them as Uruguay will play them just 4 days after playing Fiji. The one positive is that Uruguay will probably get to play everyone’s 2nd XV. But those guys will all be trying to prove themselves.

I think they’ll have Matavesi at 10, Lovabalavu or Botia at 12, Goneva at 13 and Nadolo on the left wing. Though if Nalaga can get to his best maybe they would play Nadolo in the centres. They have a lot of options!

England will certainly have the advantage but it might not be the complete annihilation you expect. Fiji have a very strong back row and 2nd row. All guys that play in top European clubs. They don’t have the same quality in the front row, but from what I’ve seen their scrum has been okay in their matches in the last year or so.

They held up okay against the Japanese scrum a few days ago (until they got a yellow card and were forced to scrum with 7), and that Japanese scrum gave the All Blacks some trouble a couple of years ago. They were also decent against the French scrum last November.

The lineout definitely needs to be improved but they have plenty of time together to work on it.

I hope there’s streaming all in one place, but I also hope it’s free and not just available to Foxtel subscribers. The guys who did the Rams home games last year also did a good job.

I wouldn’t call Samoa beating Scotland an upset. They’re seeded ahead of them and still above them in the world rankings now.

England and co still play a lot more together than Fiji. They also have vastly more professional set ups and their players are all in the same domestic competitions. The tier 2 nations should really gain the most out of world cup preparations. At least in comparison to how they are in other years. Outside of the world cups they also have more problems with player availability, as clubs are always pressuring players to make themselves unavailable.

The reasons I think England could be most vulnerable is because it’s the opening match and they could feel that pressure, and because I think their backline is the weakest. The Fijian backline is as good as any in the tournament and so dangerous. With actual combinations from playing together for 3 months, I think they’ll be such a big threat in attack. And from watching them in the Pacific Nations Cup and against the Maori I think they have enough ability up front to win a reasonable amount of possession. The biggest problem at the moment is their lineout, but with Frans Ludeke (coach of the Bulls) now helping out, I think they should improve a lot in that area. All their forwards play in Europe too. They won’t fold easily.

Can’t see it happening unless Fiji field a B team for the match. All signs are that this Fijian side will be much more like the quality of the 2007 side rather than the shambolic 2011 team. Just last November they got within 4 points of Wales. And they will be a lot better prepared for the world cup. You never really see them at full strength outside of it, considering how little time they usually have together.

But Fiji do play Australia just 5 days after England, so it’s possible they could target that match and rest players against England. Hopefully not as it’s better for the tournament if the opening match is competitive.

Interesting pick re Ireland! They have a lot of hype around them at the moment but it was the same in 2007 after winning the Triple Crown that year. Yet they didn’t make the quarter finals and were very lucky to squeak past Georgia 14-10! They even struggled to put away Namibia.

I think it would be a huge surprise if they didn’t make at least the quarter finals this year. They have a lot better depth now and a great coach. But who knows! In a one off game a team like Italy, or even Canada could have the match of their lives.

The 2003 world cup had no major upsets, unless you count Australia beating New Zealand in the semi finals. But that’s wasn’t the sort of big surprise I’m talking about in this article. 2007 had Argentina beating France, Fiji beating Wales and France beating New Zealand. But there really haven’t been many, especially if you just consider teams from outside the traditional powers pulling off big wins. But the gap is getting closer and rugby is growing in a lot of places. Whether or not it happens in this tournament I expect the rugby world order to be shaken up in the coming decade.

In the last 5 years all the TV revenue for Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship has been split evenly among the 3 unions. Not sure how it will work out in the next iteration as South Africa will have an extra team and there’ll also be the teams from Japan and Argentina.

Well the last time Liverpool were here was just 2 years ago. Big European clubs are coming every year and getting huge crowds every time.

I think there’s a place for Townsville vs Newcastle, but IMO it’s the NRC – played during the international season and after Super Rugby. I don’t think such a domestic competition has any chance of rivalling the NRL or AFL so I think it’s better if it remains a semi-professional aspirational competition with good connection to the grassroots. Played at suburban grounds with very affordable ticket prices. I think that’s great.

Super Rugby can be improved a lot structurally, but it is capable of earning much greater revenues, especially per team. Importantly it allows Australians to see world class rugby outside of test matches. If it dies and we revert to a purely domestic competition then rugby will go the way of basketball in this country. One of the only advantages rugby has as a sport is the international element – it gives Super Rugby a point of difference. Maybe that point of difference is being poorly executed, but I certainly don’t think it’s in our best interests to get rid of it and make an NRL Lite.

Hooper and Pocock are 2 of the Wallabies 3 best players along with Folau. They also have complementary skill sets and play very different games. I think it makes perfect sense to start them together. We should play to our strengths. We’re not going to beat teams like England or South Africa by bulldozing through them.

It could be good but the NZRU didn’t want to do it.

But I think it’s inevitable that something more like this will happen in Super Rugby eventually. There’ll be two divisions, Pacific and Atlantic, and the amount of cross-divisional games in the regular season will be small.

Sheek, I think you can see by the crowds the likes of Liverpool, Real Madrid and co are getting in Australia that what Australian soccer fans want to see most is the best teams and players in the world. Can you imagine how much bigger the A League would be if it was the best league in the world?

The AFL and NRL don’t have the problem of having to compete with other leagues for talent.

On the other hand rugby is not popular enough in Australia to support a domestic league that would pay top players enough to stay in the country. Most of the guys currently playing Super Rugby would leave and you’d get something similar in standard to the NRC, just played for a longer period of time. It’d be like the A-League with smaller crowds. Outside of 5 or 6 Wallabies matches there wouldn’t be any world class rugby played in Australia each year.

I’d rather we stick with Super Rugby and try and make it better. Give me the Waratahs vs Crusaders over the Townsville Jellyfish vs Newcastle Coal Miners any day. Australian derby’s are pretty dull games a lot of the time anyway.

It’s cheaper now. You can get the sport (plus the basic foxtel package) for $50 a month – or $60 with HD. Hopefully one day they will offer the sport package without having to buy the basic pack as well, but for $50 a month it’s pretty good value if you are a sports fan. It’s like the equivalent of going to 2 games with general admission tickets, or taking someone to see 1 movie.

I think major sport on free channels will become less and less common in Australia over the next decade.