Rugby World Cup
The Rugby World Cup is a men’s rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams. The winners are awarded the Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School pupil who invented rugby. Four countries have won the trophy; New Zealand and South Africa three times, Australia twice, and England once. Japan hosted the 2019 World Cup and France will host the next in 2023.
About Rugby World Cup in brief
The Rugby World Cup is a men’s rugby union tournament contested every four years between the top international teams. The tournament is administered by World Rugby, the sport’s international governing body. The winners are awarded the Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School pupil who, according to a popular legend, invented rugby by picking up the ball during a football game. Four countries have won the trophy; New Zealand and South Africa three times, Australia twice, and England once. South Africa are the current champions, having defeated England in the final of the 2019 tournament in Japan. Japan hosted the 2019 World Cup and France will host the next in 2023. On 21 August 2019, World Rugby announced that gender designations would be removed from the titles of the men’s and women’s World Cups. The first tournament to be affected by the new policy will be the next women’s tournament in New Zealand in 2021, which will officially be titled as “Rugby World Cup 2021”. The 2015 tournament involved twenty nations competing over six weeks. There were two stages, a pool and a knockout. Nations were divided into four pools, A through to D, of five nations each. The teams were seeded before the start of the tournament, with the seedings taken from the World Rankings in December 2012. If two or more teams are level on points, a system of criteria is used to determine the higher rank through the official World Rankings. The knockout stage consists of quarter- and semi-finals, and then the final.
If the knockout stages ends in a draw, the winner is determined through extra time and the match goes into sudden death. As a last resort, a kicking competition is used, with a goal kick being the last resort. It expanded to the Five Nations in 1910, when France joined the tournament. France did not participate during the period from 1931 to 1939, which meant there was no truly global rugby union competition, but there were a number of other tournaments. One of the oldest is the Six Nations Championship, which started in 1883. It is a tournament between England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and is a competition between the Home Nations. It was expanded to five nations in 1910. It started as a Five Nations tournament between Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and Scotland, but it expanded to six nations in 1931. The Six Nations is now the oldest tournament in rugby union, with England, Wales and Scotland competing in it every two years. It has been held since 1883, when it was first held by England, and it is the only tournament to have been held outside the UK. The current format allows for 12 of the 20 available positions to be filled by automatic qualification, as the teams who finish third or better in the group stages of the previous tournament enter its successor. In 2003 and 2007, the qualifying format allowed for eight of the twenty available positions. The remaining twelve positions were filled by continental qualifying tournaments. The last place is determined by an intercontinental play-off.
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This page is based on the article Rugby World Cup published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
