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HOW TO RUN A RUGBY WORLD CUP

MAKE IT EDGY, MAKE IT QUICK

The rugby World Cup starts on September 7th. It should be taut and lean, like its participants, says Rob Smyth. Instead, it is bloated by too many pointless games and too many no-hope teams ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, September 2007

The 47-day cricket World Cup in the Caribbean earlier this year, widely acclaimed as the worst world cup in the history of any sport, was like a series of “Big Brother”. It seemed to be on television 24 hours a day, and yet it contained so little significant action that even the highlights were dull. “Day 40,” you could hear that deadpan Geordie voice saying, “England beat the West Indies in a game that means nothing to either side.” The reasons were not far to seek: commerce, and the desire to spread the word to emerging nations. But that word is unlikely to trip off the tongue if it has 47 syllables.

The rugby World Cup, from September 7th to October 20th, is likely to be equally unexciting. The group stages last 24 days and 40 matches, yet only those between France, Argentina and Ireland are likely to matter. The tournament will be a book with a 200-page introduction.

As recently as the mid-1990s, both the cricket and rugby showpieces were reasonably svelte. The 1995 rugby World Cup spanned 30 days and 32 games, and the 1996 cricket World Cup fitted 39 games into 31 days. Football, no stranger to overkill, has stayed frugal here. The number of teams taking part in the football World Cup increased from 16 teams to 24 in 1982, and again to 32 in 1998. But only once has the tournament lasted longer than a month, creeping up to 33 days in France in 1998.

The first two cricket World Cups lasted 15 days, and this September’s inaugural World Twenty20--the World Cup of three-hour, after-work cricket--will be all over in two weeks. That, however, is because the International Cricket Council does not yet take Twenty20 seriously, just as it dismissed one-day cricket in its 1970s infancy. As soon as the concept really takes off, so, inevitably, will the schedule.

Planning a World Cup is not unlike making a compilation tape, as in the film of Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity”: “You've got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention€¦and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch€¦and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side€¦There are so many rules.”

Rule one is that the tournament should not exceed a month. To enjoy a World Cup, we have to pay attention to it, spotting new stars, relishing the novelty of the surprise package and the unexpected demise of the supposed favourites. Certain genres have a natural limit--four minutes for a pop song, 90 for a comic film--and for all its engagement of the senses, sport is hardly “War and Peace”.

A World Cup should have a knockout stage, from at least the quarter-finals onwards, to provide the frisson of sudden death that is in the DNA of cup competition. This year’s cricket World Cup had only three knockout games, and as two of them involved the all-conquering Australians, the results were in little doubt. By the end, which took place in pitch darkness, things were so bad that even the ICC admitted the error of its ways. In 2011 its World Cup will shrink to 35 days.

There must also be a balance between minnows and big fish. The bloating of the cricket and rugby World Cups means that around half the sides have absolutely no chance of reaching the knockout stages; at last year’s football World Cup, the figure, at a conservative estimate, was a much more rewarding 25%.

Teams should be guaranteed no more than three games--watching Portugal, Japan and the rest get trounced four times on the rugby field is going to do nobody any favours. The format should be transparent and comprehensible, so no Super Sixes, no quotients, no best third-placed sides sneaking through to the next round.

The need for fairness extends to the participants. The story of the team beaten in the group stages only to vanquish their conquerors in a knockout is as old as time itself, but teams should get no more than a
second chance. England had four at the cricket World Cup, thanks to a format that legitimated repeated failure. And at last year’s Baseball World Classic, Korea beat Japan convincingly in both pool stages, only to lose to them in the semi-finals. Baseball may allow its participants three strikes, but this was ridiculous.