Your Guide To: Rugby World Cup 2015

The Rugby World Cup 2015 takes place this autumn at various venues across England and Wales, with 20 teams contending to win the coveted Webb Ellis Cup. The 8th staging of the tournament sees New Zealand as favourites to repeat their success of 2011, when they narrowly beat France 8-7 in Auckland.

Make-up of the Competition

In the early stages the teams are divided into 4 pools of 5 countries, where each team plays the other four in their group. Teams receive four points for a win, with the points being shared if the match ends in a draw. Bonus point are awarded when a team scores more than four tries, or loses a match by less than seven points.

The pools are made up as follows:

Pool A – Australia, England, Fiji, Uruguay and Wales.
Pool B – Japan, Samoa, Scotland, South Africa and USA.
Pool C – Argentina, Georgia, Namibia, New Zealand and Tonga.
Pool D – Canada, France, Ireland, Italy and Romania.

The tournament gets underway on Friday 18th September when England take on Fiji at Twickenham. The pool matches then continue until Sunday 11th October, when the top 2 teams in each pool move on to the knock-out stages. After Quarter-final and Semi-final matches, the tournament culminates in the Rugby World Cup 2015 final at Twickenham on Saturday 31st October.

Who will win the Rugby World Cup 2015?

In the previous seven stagings of the tournament, the winners have come from the Southern Hemisphere on six occasions, with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa each lifting the trophy twice. The only time there has been a Northern Hemisphere winner is when England were successful in 2003.

Ranked No.1 in the world, the New Zealand All-Blacks are the stand out team and are strong favourites to lift the trophy. South Africa will be expected to make the final and are fully capable of winning, while an Australian victory would be a surprise, but certainly not impossible. England and Wales, on home soil will both be a threat, as will current Six-Nations champions Ireland.