2021 Rugby World Cup

The 2021 Rugby World Cup is scheduled to be the ninth Rugby World Cup for women, to be held in New Zealand between 18 September and 16 October 2021 in the cities of Auckland and Whangārei. This will be the first women's Rugby World Cup to be held in the southern hemisphere. The eighth World Cup was played in 2017 in Dublin and Belfast, setting record attendances and viewership numbers.[1][2]

This article is about women's rugby union World Cup. For for men's rugby league World Cup, see 2021 Rugby League World Cup.
2021 Rugby World Cup
Tournament details
Host nation New Zealand
Dates18 September – 16 October
No. of nations12
Tournament statistics
Matches played26
← 2017
2025 →

In May 2018, it was announced that the format of the World Cup would be changing for the 2021 World Cup with classification matches being replaced with quarter finals.[3][4]

On 21 August 2019, World Rugby announced that gender designations would be removed from the title of the women's World Cup. All World Cup tournaments from 2021 forward, whether for men or women, will be officially called the "Rugby World Cup" with a year designation.[5]

Host selection

The schedule for World Rugby to select a host country is:

  1. 31 May 2018 — Unions formally confirm an expression of interest in bidding. Six unions confirmed their interest in bidding — four European nations (France, England, Wales, and Portugal); and two southern hemisphere nations (New Zealand and Australia).
  2. 10 August 2018 — Unions submit bids to World Rugby. Both Australia and New Zealand have publicly announced that they have submitted bids to host the tournament, which has never been held in the southern hemisphere.
  3. 14 November 2018 — World Rugby Council selects tournament host in Dublin.[6]

New Zealand will host the 2021 Rugby World Cup, as announced by World Rugby on 14 November 2018. It will be the first women's Rugby World Cup to be held in the southern hemisphere.

Venues

Three venues are set to host and all are on the North Island. The opening game featuring the Black Ferns will be hosted at New Zealand's national stadium Eden Park. Furthermore, it will also host the semi-finals, 3rd place play-off and final. Other pool games as well as the quarter-finals will be held at Semenoff Stadium and Waitakere Stadium.

Locations of the 2021 Rugby World Cup
Auckland Whangārei Auckland
Eden Park Semenoff Stadium Waitakere Stadium
Capacity: 60,000 Capacity: 30,000 Capacity: 4,901

Qualifying
Main article: 2021 Rugby World Cup qualifying

New Zealand, the host nation, had already qualified automatically winning the 2017 tournament before being announced as hosts. A further six teams (England, France, United States, Canada, Australia and Wales) qualified automatically as top seven finishers at the 2017 tournament. The remaining qualifiers will be determined by the end of 2020.

Qualified teams
Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania
Automatic Qualifiers
Regional Qualifiers
  • TBD (Asia 1)
  • TBD (Europe 1)
Cross-Regional
Repechage play-off [lower-alpha 1]
Repechage
tournament
  • TBD (Asia 2)
  • TBD (Europe 2)
Qualified team
  1. South America/Africa play-off: South America 1 will progress to a play-off with the second-placed team from Africa to determine the fourth team to compete in the Repechage. Repechage tournament: The final team to qualify for RWC 2021 will be decided via the new Repechage tournament, which will take place in 2020. The tournament will consist of the second placed teams in the Asia, Europe and Oceania regional tournaments and the winner of the play-off between South America and second-placed team from the Africa regional qualifier.

Draw

Seedings for the pools of the 2021 World Cup were based on the teams' respective World Rugby Rankings. The draw, hosted by sports pundit and former English and British and Irish Lions international Ugo Monye and sports journalist and presenter Elma Smit, was conducted on 20 November 2020 in the SkyCity Theatre in Auckland, and used the World Rankings as of 1 January 2020, before the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first case in which the Women's World Cup was drawn based on World Rankings instead of classification from the previous World Cup.[7][8] The automatic qualifiers from 2017 were allocated to their respective bands based on their rankings - and the remaining 5 qualifying places were allocated to Bands 3 and 4 based on previous World Cup playing strength:

  • Band 1, made up of the top 3 automatic qualifiers, (1–3)
  • Band 2, made up of the next 3 automatic qualifiers, (4–6)
  • Band 3, made up of the 7th automatic qualifier, Europe 1 and Africa 1
  • Band 4, made up of Asia 1, Oceania 1 and Repechage winner

This meant the 12 teams, qualified and qualifiers, were seeded thus:

Band 1 Band 2 Band 3 Band 4
  • Asia 1
  •  Fiji (Oceania 1)
  • Repechage winner

The pools were respectively drawn by New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, former Black Ferns internationals, Melodie Robinson and Farah Palmer and former All Blacks international, Dan Carter.

Pool stage

Each pool will be a single round-robin of six games, in which each team will play one match against each of the other teams in the same pool. Teams are awarded four points for a win, two points for a draw. A team that scores four or more tries earns a bonus point, as does a team that loses by less than eight points.

The tournament will comprise twelve teams divided into three pools of four teams. The top two teams in each pool, as well as the best two third-placed teams progress to the quarter-finals.

Fixtures were announced on 28 January 2021.

Pool A
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts
 New Zealand 0000000+000
 Australia 0000000+000
 Wales 0000000+000
Repechage winner 0000000+000
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 16:45		 Wales  v Repechage winner Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 19:15		 New Zealand  v  Australia Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/20]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 16:45		 New Zealand  v  Wales Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/5]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 16:45		 Australia  v Repechage winner Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 14:45		 Australia  v  Wales Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/5]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 16:45		 New Zealand  v Repechage winner Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]


Pool B
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts
 Canada 0000000+000
 United States 0000000+000
Europe 1 0000000+000
Asia 1 0000000+000
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 11:45		 United States  v Europe 1 Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 14:15		 Canada  v Asia 1 Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 11:45		 Canada  v  United States Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/40]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 14:15		 Europe 1 v Asia 1 Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 11:45		 Canada  v Europe 1 Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 14:15		 United States  v Asia 1 Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/-]


Pool C
Team Pld W D L TF PF PA +/− BP Pts
 England 0000000+000
 France 0000000+000
 South Africa 0000000+000
 Fiji 0000000+000
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 14:15		 France  v  South Africa Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/4]
Test no. 14--
18 September 2021 16:45		 England  v  Fiji Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/1]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 14:15		 France  v  Fiji Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/1]
Test no. 14--
23 September 2021 19:15		 England  v  South Africa Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/6]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 16:45		 South Africa  v  Fiji Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/1]
Test no. 14--
28 September 2021 19:15		 England  v  France Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/51]

Knockout stage
 
Quarter-finalsSemi-finalsFinal
 
          
 
3 October – Auckland (Waitakere)
 
 
Seed 4
 
7 October – Auckland (Eden)
 
Seed 5
 
Winner Quarter-Final 1
 
3 October – Auckland (Waitakere)
 
Winner Quarter-Final 2
 
Seed 3
 
16 October – Auckland (Eden)
 
Seed 6
 
Winner Semi-Final 1
 
3 October – Whangārei
 
Winner Semi-Final 2
 
Seed 2
 
7 October – Auckland (Eden)
 
Seed 7
 
Winner Quarter-Final 3
 
3 October – Whangārei
 
Winner Quarter-Final 4Third place
 
Seed 1
 
16 October – Auckland (Eden)
 
Seed 8
 
Loser Semi-Final 1
 
 
Loser Semi-Final 2
 

Quarter-finals
Test no. 14--
3 October 2021 13:15		 Seed 4 v Seed 5 Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
3 October 2021 16:15		 Seed 3 v Seed 6 Waitakere Stadium, Auckland [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
3 October 2021 13:15		 Seed 2 v Seed 7 Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
3 October 2021 13:15		 Seed 1 v Seed 8 Semenoff Stadium, Whangārei [-/-/-]

Semi-finals
Test no. 14--
7 October 2021 16:30		 Winner Quarter-final 1 v Winner Quarter-final 2 Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/-]
Test no. 14--
7 October 2021 19:30		 Winner Quarter-final 3 v Winner Quarter-final 4 Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/-]

Third-place play-off
Test no. 14--
16 October 2021 16:30		 Loser Semi-final 1 v Loser Semi-final 2 Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/-]

Final
Test no. 14--
16 October 2021 19:30		 Winner Semi-final 1 v Winner Semi-final 2 Eden Park, Auckland [-/-/-]

Broadcasting

Spark Sport will be the host broadcaster for the Rugby World Cup, broadcasting all matches live[9] and on demand[10] through its online streaming platform. TVNZ will broadcast a selection of games free-to-air on New Zealand television.

See also

References
  1. Brooke, Colin (2018). "Six countries in running for 2021 Women's RWC, including one you wouldn't expect". Rugby Pass. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  2. Philips, Sam (2018). "World Rugby announce 2021 WRWC bidders". Rugby.com. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  3. "Women's Rugby World Cup: Format changes announced for 2021 tournament". BBC Sport. 10 May 2018. Retrieved 22 August 2018.
  4. Orchard, Sara (2018). "Women's Rugby World Cup: Format changes announced for 2021 tournament". BBC. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  5. "World Rugby announces gender neutral naming for Rugby World Cup tournaments" (Press release). World Rugby. 21 August 2019. Retrieved 22 August 2019.
  6. World Rugby (2018). "Record hosting interest for Women's Rugby World Cup 2021". World Rugby. Retrieved 7 September 2018.
  7. "Date set for 2021 Rugby World Cup draw". World Rugby. 19 October 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
  8. "Confirmation of 2021 Rugby World Cup draw". World Rugby. 12 November 2020. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  9. "RWC 2021 - Women's Rugby World cup Live Stream, TV Guide". RugbyOnlineStreams.com. Retrieved 2020-11-26.
  10. "RWC 2021 set to break new ground as tournament dates are announced". World Rugby. 3 February 2020. Retrieved 25 July 2020.
  11. "Rugby Canada (Design, Hosting, Registration & Administration tools by esportsdeskpro.com)". www.rugbycanada.ca. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  12. "Rugby Canada (Design, Hosting, Registration & Administration tools by esportsdeskpro.com)". www.rugbycanada.ca. Retrieved 14 September 2017.
  13. "NBC Sports Group acquires exclusive US media rights to biggest events". World Rugby. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
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