Problem with 24 teams is you have an imperfect path to 8 teams. You can't have an even number of qualifiers per group, so have to have some tie-breaker. Football has always included an extra Round of 16, which brings your tournament length back up.
Jocks be delighted with that
I've heard this before and I think it would make for a lot of inconsequential group matches. 36 games just to eliminate 8 of the semi-pro teams. I prefer the 1999 RWC format with five groups of four and a playoff round.
Thought about it a bit more, what are the likes of Romania, Namibia, Portugal and Chile really adding to their groups? The drop off in quality once you get outside the top 16 is huge. A reminder that only 5 teams have ever actually contested a World Cup Final, Ireland have never even made it to a semi yet. It's not like Football were you can get surprise semi finalists like Morocco, Turkey or S Korea.
Yeah, the world cup is the one rugby event that isn't against the same handful teams all the time. If there aren't minnows at the world cup then you're basically saying we don't want new nations at all.
How are teams and their players supposed to get better without any international exposure or any international goals to aim for
My point is that over the last 30 years, there has been no sign of this happening anyway. Exposure doesn't seem to make any difference. The ICC have clearly given up on this idea even though you could argue there's more competitiveness in the next tier cricket nations than there is in their rugby equivalents.
The cricket World Cup was difficult to find the right format for, and they botched it repeatedly before settling on the current one. The last one was somewhat more exciting as a result. But even so, it's not something that other sports are trying to emulate because, well, you described it accurately - they've given up. A World Cup is every sport's one chance to grab the attention of people outside of its usual core fandom and cricket has decided to not even try.
That's not a fair comparison as football is a far more global sport than rugby, and the nature of the sport means that it is more prone to upsets (such as Saudi Arabia beating Argentina.)
I quite enjoyed the 2007 format, I thought that struck a good balance of allowing plenty of minnows to qualify whilst also getting rid of minnows fairly quickly. The problem with that tournament was India and Pakistan ****ing up the initial group stage, so we needed a format that didn't risk TV audiences in both countries.
I think what you mean to say is that Ireland and Bangladesh foiled the ICC's evil money-making scheme by being too good.
I take your point, but Namibia have played in every World Cup since 1999 and have lost all 24 of their matches. If they are doing enough to qualify every time but not enough to actually win a game, what has been achieved by giving them exposure to a couple of heavy thrashings every 4 years?
Having countries join the elite wasn’t one of my arguments for it tbf. Sri Lanka did it though, it’s rare but not impossible.
Ironically, it's happened more in Cricket (reduce World Cup to 10 teams) than Rugby (keep it at 20). You can add Bangladesh and Afghanistan to the list too, who'd have thought 30 years ago they'd be keeping the Windies out of a World Cup.
otoh Namibia is clearly the second best team in Africa and given the IRB (deadnaming organizations is fine) organizes qualifying by continent they would probably get a spot even in a 16-team world cup.
Australia have played Fiji 7 times in the last 20 years and only 3 of those outside World Cups. They haven't played a match in Fiji since 1984.