World Cup Draw - very strange

[tim2]

It's only just occurred to me, and may have been mentioned before, but in all other major tournaments they do the draw so that you don't meet the same team who qualified in your pool until the final.

If Samoa win today, or if Fiji had won last night, they play the same team as their pool winners in the semi-final.

PNG and Samoa should have gone into Australia's half of the draw, and Lebanon and Fiji into England's.

Just a bit odd.

 

[Niels]

Yes it is very unusual and I think took some jeopardy out of the pool games.

I realised early on so I had a small bet on England, realising they couldn't meet Aus/Nz until the final. 

[gingerjon]

24 minutes ago, tim2 said:

It's only just occurred to me, and may have been mentioned before, but in all other major tournaments they do the draw so that you don't meet the same team who qualified in your pool until the final.

If Samoa win today, or if Fiji had won last night, they play the same team as their pool winners in the semi-final.

PNG and Samoa should have gone into Australia's half of the draw, and Lebanon and Fiji into England's.

Just a bit odd.

 

Every World Cup - possibly except 2000 - has featured some rigging of the draw. This is just the latest example.

It has been discussed a fair bit but there have been a *lot* of threads so easy to miss.

[MatthewWoody]

So that you don't meet them in the QF. But it's normal to meet them in SF if there's an upset

[tim2]

6 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

So that you don't meet them in the QF. But it's normal to meet them in SF if there's an upset

Not in a 4 pool tournament where 2 qualify.

[tim2]

19 minutes ago, Niels said:

Yes it is very unusual and I think took some jeopardy out of the pool games.

I realised early on so I had a small bet on England, realising they couldn't meet Aus/Nz until the final. 

It's OK to seed the top 4 so that it's 1v4 and 2v3, if you have some justification for the ranking. My argument here isn't with that, it's the QF draw that's wrong.

[MatthewWoody]

1 minute ago, tim2 said:

Not in a 4 pool tournament where 2 qualify.

Ok, I'm not very familiar. 

[tim2]

2 minutes ago, MatthewWoody said:

Ok, I'm not very familiar. 

My wife's a tennis tournament ref/organiser and was very surprised they'd done it like this.

[Black Country Wire]

Last time the football WC was like this was 2002 when Brazil and Turkey met in both the group stages and the semi final.

I may be wrong but I think there was a Japan half and a South Korea half.

Since then it has been impossible to meet anyone from your first round group again until the final.

The Euros is slightly different because some 3rd place teams can go through.

[hw88]

1 hour ago, Black Country Wire said:

Last time the football WC was like this was 2002 when Brazil and Turkey met in both the group stages and the semi final.

I may be wrong but I think there was a Japan half and a South Korea half.

Since then it has been impossible to meet anyone from your first round group again until the final.

The Euros is slightly different because some 3rd place teams can go through.

 

Correct. They hate each other. Originally it was to be in Japan alone but the Koreans kicked up a stink so FIFA got them to share the tournament. It's the first time it happened I believe.

[DavidM]

1 hour ago, Black Country Wire said:

may be wrong but I think there was a Japan half and a South Korea half

There was a lot of strange stuff in that World Cup that in total coincidence benefitted South Korea 

[DavidM]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

My wife's a tennis tournament ref/organiser and was very surprised they'd done it like this.

My sister works in tesco and she was surprised they did it like this 

[tim2]

Incorrect post

Edited November 6, 2022 by tim2

[The Hallucinating Goose]

16 minutes ago, DavidM said:

My sister works in tesco and she was surprised they did it like this 

Can you inform her that Tesco underwear is far too expensive?

[Black Country Wire]

16 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Can you inform her that Tesco underwear is far too expensive?

Half a knicker certainly doesn't cover it.

(To quote Ronnie Barker)

[Anita Bath]

19 minutes ago, The Hallucinating Goose said:

Can you inform her that Tesco underwear is far too expensive?

I take it you would like to see Tescos underwear come down.

[The Hallucinating Goose]

2 minutes ago, Anita Bath said:

I take it you would like to see Tescos underwear come down.

Quite frankly these days anyone's underwear coming down for me would be a God send. 

[Number 16]

There's a link between Tescos' polyester underwear and our biased WC semi-final draw.

Warm Balls.

[N2022]

3 hours ago, tim2 said:

My wife's a tennis tournament ref/organiser and was very surprised they'd done it like this.

I'm surprised she was surprised. I though it was a very 'tennis' thing to make a draw in a set format, so the top 2 seeds were guaranteed not to meet each other on the route to a final. Mixed feelings about it myself. In team sports it's sometimes a bit different with a view to making any final pairing possible depending on how results pan out and I can see benefits and drawbacks of either model. I think this seems strange to us now, as Samoa have done something no other second placed team in beating group winners in the QF. Had it been Eng v Tonga we'd have thought less of it, but now we are faced with the prospect of a repeat of a game that's already happened. I do think the attendance might not be quite what it would have been for Eng Tonga, partly for this reason, whilst I acknowledge one game was Newcastle and the next is London, and some will have bought tickets earlier or be happy to see whoever,

[Just Browny]

Max Decimus thought he was both Woodward and Bernstein when he first spotted this.

[GUBRATS]

Yes , it's ' dodgy ' but it's better than super groups 

Which other major sports tournaments have the top seeds playing each other first game ?

Edited November 6, 2022 by GUBRATS

[Griff]

4 hours ago, tim2 said:

It's only just occurred to me, and may have been mentioned before, but in all other major tournaments they do the draw so that you don't meet the same team who qualified in your pool until the final.

If Samoa win today, or if Fiji had won last night, they play the same team as their pool winners in the semi-final.

PNG and Samoa should have gone into Australia's half of the draw, and Lebanon and Fiji into England's.

Just a bit odd.

 

Yep. Spotted it as soon as I saw the draw.

I assume it's rigged to guarantee that England cannot meet Australia before the final.

[Griff]

3 hours ago, MatthewWoody said:

So that you don't meet them in the QF. But it's normal to meet them in SF if there's an upset

Rubbish.

[Tex Evans Thigh]

This was discussed to death at the start of the tournament. Yes, it's rubbish and if they wanted to rig it so England had the easier semi they could have quite easily done it and had the proper format where teams from same group go into different sides. They could have just put Samoa in NZ or Aus group to engineer this same QF which England could have played the winner but they didnt.

[Whippet13]

There isn't some sort of international sporitng World Cup rules book, the organisers can do it however they want. The best 4 teams are in the semis and England have a great chance of at least making the final, that's all I care about. I suspect over 99% of the people watching the RLWC QF onwards matches won't even think or care about how the teams got there.