Rugby World Cup
Battle lines to be drawn for RWC'11
Scrum.com
December 1, 2008
The site of the draw, Tourism New Zealand's giant inflatable ball, was last seen next to the Eiffel Tower in Paris during last year's Rugby World Cup
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The eyes of the rugby world will focus on London on Monday with the sport's big names awaiting the RWC'11 pool allocation draw. The top three bands for the draw, based on the IRB World Rankings, were confirmed on following the final major internationals of the year. England's 32-6 defeat against New Zealand means that they drop to sixth in the latest rankings that will be confirmed on Monday. Had England defeated New Zealand, they would have moved above Argentina into fourth, and into the top band of teams for the RWC 2011 Pool Allocation Draw. Wales will move up to fifth in the rankings thanks to their 21-18 win over Australia. Had they beaten Australia by more than 15 points, Wales could have moved into fourth and the top RWC Draw band, at the expense of Argentina. For the first time the IRB World Rankings will be used to seed the 12 pre-qualified teams from RWC 2007 into bands for the draw, which takes place inside a huge inflatable ball next to Tower Bridge in London. Members of the Maori community will welcome the team representatives plus Bernard Lapasset, Chairman, Rugby World Cup Limited, and Jock Hobbs, Chairman, Rugby New Zealand 2011, ahead of the actual draw that will take place at 15.00GMT. As in RWC 2007, there will be four pools of five teams in RWC 2011. The teams in the top three bands are as follows: Band 1: New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina Band 2: Wales, England, France, Ireland Band 3: Scotland, Fiji, Italy, Tonga The final two positions in each pool will be allocated to the eight qualifying places still available for RWC 2011. The banding of these eight teams is as follows: Band 4: Americas 1, Europe 1, Europe 2, Oceania 1 Band 5: Africa 1, Americas 2, Asia 1, Play Off place The teams in each band will be drawn randomly into one of the four pools. There has been some criticism of the decision to formulate the New Zealand 2011 draw based on world rankings almost three years before the event. But Kit McConnell, head of Rugby World Cup 2011, said: "The draw is very important for us because from there we can develop the match schedule; we can select team base camps and we can also develop the ticketing strategy for the tournament. Those three elements are really critical to putting the building blocks in place early enough to make 2011 the same success as we saw in France (2007). "By having certainty about which teams are playing which other teams in each pool, we can develop the match schedule. That is obviously of critical importance to the teams and also the supporters to know who is playing which other teams when, and where - and we will be announcing that in March, so that is really the next key step in the tournament preparations.'' Stay tuned to Scrum.com for full coverage. Rugby World Cup Draw Facts:
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