The Begining of the End of Pacific Islands Rugby Featured
17 October, 2015. The pool stages of the Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2015 are now over and, not surprisingly, the world's biggest rugby nations (bar the hosts) have qualified for the quarterfinals.
These nations haven't exactly had an easy run into the quarters, and some of the smaller nations have caused upsets and pushed the bigger nations pretty hard.
However, like in past tournaments, this hasn't come from the once proud Pacific Island nations of Samoa, Tonga or Fiji.
In past tournaments both Samoa and Fiji have qualified for quarterfinals and claimed some huge scalps along the way. These have included Samoa's win against Wales in 1991 and Tonga's win against France in 2011.
These nations have been a real disappointment at this tournament. Call it maladministration, lack of resources bestowed to these nations by World Rugby or their own comparatively small playing bases, but I feel as though our rugby cousins have failed massively at this tournament.
It got me thinking about how these nations qualify for RWC in Japan 2019. As it stands, all eight quarterfinalists qualify for 2019, along with the third-placed teams in each pool. At this year's tournament these were, England in Pool A, Japan in Pool B, Georgia in Pool C and Italy in Pool D. No Pacific Island nations made the cut.
RWC organisers have yet to decide whether they will stay with a 20-team tournament or whether they will expand to 24 or even 32 in 2019, however, if they stay with a 20- team tournament at least one of these nations will miss out.
Using the current format, eight spots remain in 2019. These spots are provided to Europe (two), the Americas (two), Asia (one), Africa (one), Pacific Islands (one), while the final place is via a repechage process.
Supposing one of the Pacific nations wins this repechage it will still leave Tonga, Samoa or Fiji out in cold, watching the 2019 tournament from their lounges.
What could this mean for Pacific Island Rugby? Merely qualifying for the tournament equals quite substantial financial bonuses for these cash-strapped unions. Money goes into providing resources for matches played between world cups and coercing top-level coaches to build a side capable of qualifying for the knock-out rounds for the coming World Cup.
Without the stability of a guaranteed place, and the fact that wealthy clubs in the Northern Hemisphere will likely not release players for qualifiers, this could mean that just one of these nations qualify for 2019.
In any case, I believe this could be the beginning of the end for our rugby cousins. The sight of the Sipi Tau and rampaging runs by 120kg plus Pacific Island wingers could all be a thing of the past.
Source: stuff.co.nz
