2015 World Cup: England

[kronic]

Rugby World Cup Ltd has announced 17 potential venues for 2015:

1. Villa Park, Birmingham
2. Brighton Community Stadium, Brighton
3. Ashton Gate, Bristol
4. Millennium Stadium, Cardiff
5. Coventry Stadium, Coventry
6. Pride Park, Derby
7. Kingsholm, Gloucester
8. Elland Road, Leeds
9. Leicester City Stadium, Leicester
10. Olympic Stadium, London
11. Twickenham Stadium, London
12. Wembley Stadium, London
13. Old Trafford, Manchester
14. Stadiummk, Milton Keynes
15. St James' Park, Newcastle
16. St Mary's Stadium, Southampton
17. Stadium of Light, Sunderland

http://www.espnscrum.com/2015-rugby-world-cup/rugby/story/170866.html

Hardly any traditional Rugby grounds.

 

[RugbyReg]

Personally I like the idea of keeping it all 'local', in England at least. They should really springboard off the back of the Olympics as we did in 03.

 

[The_Brown_Hornet]

I'm planning on going again, but I have to say that the idea of going to some of those second tier cities in the UK doesn't really excite me that much. Let's have a jolly good time in Coventry or Birmingham

Hopefully there are some good games in Cardiff.

 

[Tangawizi]

Yeah the 3 London stadiums and then watching Wales play anyone in Cardiff would be great.

 

[Jiggles]

Cardiff is great on game day, but any other day of the week the place makes Adelaide look like the most exciting city in the world.

 

[kronic]

I plan on going for a few weeks. Hopefully catch Top 14/Pro 12/Aviva/English Football game in the weeks before-hand.

Birmingham is the 2nd biggest population outside of London. Lots of cultures there too.

Problem with the football stadiums in England is they are all plastic fantastic, due to Hillsborough disaster. Most of the Rugby grounds have character.

 

[KevinO]

With the top 12 seedings for the World Cup to be finalized next week, what's peoples thoughts on the current rankings. big game for Wales next weekend if they want to remain in the top 8. Or the Puma's will be ranked 9th and everyone will want to avoid having them in the group.
Provisional rankings (released by IRB)
1 New Zealand - 92.91
2 South Africa - 86.94
3 Australia - 86.31
4 France - 85.07
5 England - 81.07
6 Ireland - 80.22
7 Wales - 78.95
8 Samoa - 78.715
9 Argentina - 78.710
10 Italy - 76.24
11 Tonga - 76.10
12 Scotland - 75.83

 

[Bairdy]

Pool A
Australia
England
Wales
TBD
TBD

Pool B
South Africa
Samoa
Scotland
TBD
TBD

Pool C
New Zealand
Argentina
Tonga
TBD
TBD

Pool D
France
Ireland
Italy
TBD
TBD

 

[Lior]

Wow. This is going to be one hell of a difficult pool for us to even qualify. Plus it's so far away from home.

I haven't been following how they select the pools so if someone can tell me how to link this unfortunate event to Robbie Deans' tenure as Australian rugby coach then I will be grateful.

 

[qwerty51]

We're with Oceania 1 which is 99.99% likely to be Fiji.

 

[Bruwheresmycar]

Holy crap, we are in for a tough test.

I suppose if you are going to win the world cup, getting England and Wales out of the way is best done early. And I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

Anyway, this will ensure the team forces itself to be ready for the world cup, we seemed to take it a tad easy going into last years group stage, Ireland caught us off guard a bit.

I haven't been following how they select the pools so if someone can tell me how to link this unfortunate event to Robbie Deans' tenure as Australian rugby coach then I will be grateful.

Well, if he lost to Wales we would have had an easier group. If that helps!

 

[bryce]

Group of death.

 

[badabing59]

Holy crap, we are in for a tough test.

I suppose if you are going to win the world cup, getting England and Wales out of the way is best done early. And I'm sure the feeling is mutual.


Well, if he lost to Wales we would have had an easier group. If that helps!

No guarantee of that at all. The last band selected was the top four-all completely random. Aus could still have been picked first.

 

[Jets]

I don't think it's the group of death but it will be hard. I think the Wallaby psyche works better when things are hard, We would struggle with easy games, like Scotland or Samoa. As for venues I think they look good. The traditional rugby venues would be the best.

The WRU must do a good job at negotiating time. They seem to get games every time the RWC goes to Europe.

 

[Bardon]

Yes they are Jets, Roger Lewis (WRU Chief Executive) is even making a cheeky bid to get England to play their pool game against Wales at the Millennium Stadium.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/20587821

 

[qwerty51]

Twickers is better than Millennium, better surface.

 

[Jets]

I guess in good news we just beat both these teams on their home ground on the Spring tour. The RWC will be a walk in the park.

 

[kronic]

ARU don't like the idea of Wales using Milleninum it seems: http://www.espnscrum.com/2015-rugby-world-cup/rugby/story/174347.html

Not as if it's much of a fortress these days.

 

[Antony]

I'm pretty unhappy with New Zealand's pool - makes me think of 2007 all over again. Hope the Argies keep coming or we could be badly underdone.

 

[Jnor]

I'm pretty unhappy with New Zealand's pool - makes me think of 2007 all over again. Hope the Argies keep coming or we could be badly underdone.

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