Americas Rugby News Rugby news from across the Americas!
South America is in line to get a direct qualifying spot for RWC 2023, writes Ignacio Chans. The breakthrough change is being considered by World Rugby as a result of tremendous improvement from Uruguay and a lack there of from other regions.
At present Uruguay participates in qualifying against other South American countries before entering repechage. The repechage series begins against North America 2 with the winner of that match-up qualifying and the loser entering inter-regional repechage.
For RWC 2015 Uruguay lost to the USA before facing and defeating Russia. For this year’s RWC Uruguay defeated Canada to qualify and this sent the North Americans into repechage.
RWC 2023
World Rugby is presently looking at all six regions – Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, South America, and North America. The organization will determine whether to allocate South America a direct qualifying spot for RWC 2023.
If the change were to be green-lighted it would see South America no longer being the one excluded region gaining a direct spot for its qualifying winner. This may mean North America’s runner-up can only gain a spot at RWC 2023 via repechage.
RWC 2027
The official details of the RWC 2023 qualifiers are to be announced in December. World Rugby will do so at this time to allow for an uninterrupted build-up to RWC 2019. The sport’s governing body is seeking to improve on the format which is expected to see an even larger repechage process than was the case for RWC 2019.
Also under consideration for RWC 2027 is expanding the tournament. World Rugby is considering expanding the tournament to be a 24-team RWC for 2027. Under such a development it is likely that the Americas would be guaranteed four places in the tournament, the same number of participants for RWCs 1999, 2003, 2015, and 2019.
