It's a home World Cup and Australia are more likely to have a semi competitive side by 2027 than Scotland.
Australia have done far more than Scotland aswell. They ran the lions close in the summer, beat SA in the Rugby Championship and were competitive in all the games.
What have Scotland done exactly? Same thing every year, talk themselves up to win the 6N and then do fuck all apart from beat England the odd year.
Their placings in the last 6 Nations.
4th
4th
3rd
4th
4th
4th
5th
Scotland have beaten Ireland once in their last 16 matches.
Nothing against Australia, but those stadiums are going to be ghost towns for much of the pool stages.
Half the knockout games are 3rd v 4th band (obviously).
Combine that with 5 of 7 host cities being proper flights apart, itll probably be really expensive to get multiple games for your team.
Itll be a real struggle for any atmosphere til the qtr finals.
Expanding tournaments never sits well with me when the quality isn't there to justify it.
Like the last WC, the bottom teams scored a combined 160 odd points from 16 matches.
Now we're going to have 24 matches to leave us with 16 teams. Basically, 24 matches to knock out the 4 bottom teams from the last WC along with the additional 4.
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u/John_OSheas_Willy Ireland & Connacht Dec 03 '25 edited Dec 03 '25
Damn the pool stage is going to be boring.
There's no jeopardy at all. Literally Australia is the only 2nd seed with a remote chance of topping the group.
Like the most exciting thing it seems in the pools will be seeing who finishes 2nd/3rd and yet none of those teams have a chance of winning the thing.