{"id":201268,"date":"2025-11-26T13:49:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T13:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/201268\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T13:49:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T13:49:13","slug":"when-is-it-what-will-it-decide-and-who-might-ireland-face-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/201268\/","title":{"rendered":"When is it, what will it decide, and who might Ireland face? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s happening?<\/p>\n

The draw to determine who Ireland<\/a> will meet in the pool stages of the 2027 Rugby World Cup<\/a> in Australia will take place on Wednesday, December 3rd at 9am Irish time.<\/p>\n

What will the draw decide?<\/p>\n

The draw will divide the 24 participating teams into six pools of four, all of whom will play each other once during the pool stages.<\/p>\n

\"\"Saturday Shambles wraps up Ireland’s November windowHow does the draw work?<\/p>\n

The 24 teams have already been placed in one of four bands based on their world ranking on November <\/b>24th. The top six ranked teams are in Band 1, with 7-12 in Band 2, 13-18 in Band 3 and 19-24 in Band 4.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, one team will be drawn from each of the four bands to make up a pool.<\/p>\n

What band are Ireland in?<\/p>\n

After a mixed of Autumn Nations Series<\/a>, Ireland are now fourth in the world rankings. Andy Farrell<\/a>\u2019s side therefore join reigning World champions and world number ones South Africa<\/a> in Band 1, as well as New Zealand<\/a> (second), England (third), France (fifth) and Argentina (sixth).<\/p>\n

\"Ireland'sIreland’s Garry Ringrose and Bundee Aki celebrate a try against Scotland in the Pool B fixture at the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France. Photograph: Dan Sheridan\/Inpho <\/p>\n

As a Band 1 team, Ireland will be the top-ranked side in their pool and will be joined by one team from each of the three lower bands.<\/p>\n

How are the other bands looking?<\/p>\n

Band 2:<\/b> Australia, Fiji, Scotland, Italy, Wales and Japan.<\/p>\n

Band 3:<\/b> Georgia, Spain, Uruguay, USA, Chile and Tonga.<\/p>\n

Band 4:<\/b> Samoa, Portugal, Romania, Hong Kong-China, Zimbabwe, Canada.<\/p>\n

As hosts, Australia already know they\u2019ll be placed in Pool A so they\u2019ll be in action in the opening game of the tournament on October 1st, 2027.<\/p>\n

What else will the draw tell us?<\/p>\n

The draw will give us some idea as to what Ireland\u2019s path through the tournament might look like in its various guises depending on their pool and where they finish in said pool. That\u2019s obviously assuming they make it to the knock-out stages, but it feels fair to say they\u2019ve earned such optimism.<\/p>\n

The first knock-out round after the pool stages \u2013 the Round of 16, a RWC first as part of the expanded format \u2013 will be made up of the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the four best third-placed teams (based on their points from the pool stages).<\/p>\n

\"AA bracket for the 2027 Rugby World Cup showing the match-ups for the knock-out rounds of the tournament. Image: Rugby World Cup <\/p>\n

There, the winners of Pool A, B, C and D will face one of the third-place pool finishers. The winners of Pool E and F will play the runners-up of Pool D and B respectively, while the runners-up from Pool A and C will be drawn against their counterparts from Pool E and F respectively.<\/p>\n

That will all become a bit easier to digest once we know the make-up of the pools, so don\u2019t overthink it just yet.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll have updates once we know who\u2019s cannonballed into what pool, and you can be sure many a Rugby World Cup permutations piece will be penned between next Wednesday and October 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What\u2019s happening? The draw to determine who Ireland will meet in the pool stages of the 2027 Rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":201269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[70904,18,19,17,34132,36441,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-201268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-andy-farrell","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-ireland-rugby","13":"tag-rugby-world-cup","14":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115616322014054093","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}