{"id":250321,"date":"2025-07-09T08:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-09T08:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/250321\/"},"modified":"2025-07-09T08:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-09T08:54:07","slug":"world-rugby-has-banned-four-countries-from-playing-at-the-rugby-world-cup-page-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/250321\/","title":{"rendered":"World Rugby has banned FOUR countries from playing at the Rugby World Cup &#8211; Page 2 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8\u00a0<strong>#2. Spain \u2014 Disqualified from 2019 &amp; 2023 Rugby World Cups<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Spain\u2019s road to the Rugby World Cup has been plagued by eligibility controversies.<\/p>\n<p>First, in 2019,\u00a0<strong>Spain, Belgium and Romania<\/strong>\u00a0were all\u00a0<strong>sanctioned for fielding ineligible players<\/strong>\u00a0during the qualification campaign \u2014 a debacle that ended up handing Russia an unexpected ticket to Japan.<\/p>\n<p>Then in 2022, Spain qualified for the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France for what would\u2019ve been their first appearance in 24 years \u2014 only for the dream to be\u00a0<strong>shattered again<\/strong>. This time, it was discovered that Spain had allegedly\u00a0<strong>used a player with a forged passport<\/strong>\u00a0during qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>As a result, they were\u00a0<strong>docked 10 points<\/strong>, booted out of the tournament, and replaced by\u00a0<strong>Romania<\/strong>, who had finished just behind them.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u274c\u00a0Despite appeals, World Rugby upheld the ban, marking the second time Spain had been removed from World Cup contention due to player eligibility issues.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ruck.co.uk\/world-rugby-has-banned-four-countries-from-playing-at-the-rugby-world-cup\/2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CONTINUES ON PAGE THREE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Like this:<\/p>\n<p>Like Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/>\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8\u00a0#2. Spain \u2014 Disqualified from 2019 &amp; 2023 Rugby World Cups Spain\u2019s road to the Rugby World Cup&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4102],"tags":[4151,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-250321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114822438202480786","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}