The latest IRB world rankings (
http://www.irb.com/rankings/full.html ) has Namibia at 20. How is the 20th ranked nation being included not on merit? Is that not a fair reflection?
I am of the opinion that Africa certainly deserves that 1 extra spot beyond SA as an automatic qualifier because
the Americas (which contains less countries) already has 3 just about assured participation in Argentina, USA and Canada.
The rest will then have to battle it out for another spot.
This is a good example of how many people believe the system is legitimate... World Rankings need to be World Rankings. Teams need to play others from a diverse set of regions. Namibia is in 20th for a select few reasons and they are problematic.
1. No matches vs Tier Two opposition or Tier one aside from World Cup´s. Meaning, Namibia´s chances of dropping are vastly different to other teams. Russia has been facing Tier Two sides including Canada, Georgia, Romania and the USA reguarly. Nambia has not. Between 2008 and RWC 2011 Namibia played no Tier One or Tier Two side and full strength.
2. Namibia´s wins have been vs second string teams. i.e in the IRB Nations Cup. Just ask any follower of Georgia or Romania.
3. No matches at RWC 2011 that had any effect on the teams ranking. Russia, in contrast, lost a tight match vs the USA but dropped down the rankings. Russia were far too good vs Namibia in Windhock, winning 30-15 in 2010. Namibia´s November 2010 tour of Europe saw losses to Portugal and Spain. Neither side played in RWC 2011 due to Europe having a far tougher qualification system.
4. Matches vs African teams who, unlike opponents for the likes of Russia stand no chance of playing in a World Cup. Namibia may well be in 20th but Spain are higher yet Europe has two qualification spots with Russia, Romania, Georgia, Portugal and Spain all having defeated Namibia recently. Clearly, its good to be African!
South Africa aside Africa´s World Cup record is
24 matches, 24 losses.
Uruguay, in contrast, has played 7 RWC matches for
2 wins and 5 loses.
The point that South America having less country´s than Africa is important but extremely wrong. I´ll show you why. First open the two following links:
Africa
http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/qualifying/fixtures/geoarea=23913/qfdiagram.html
Americas
http://www.rugbyworldcup.com/qualifying/fixtures/geoarea=23914/qfdiagram.html
You will see that Africa has 10 countries with Namibia set to face Madagascar, Morocco and Senegal. They will be joined by one other, maybe the Cote d´Ivoire in 2014. From there one will be Africa 1 and one Africa 2. In other words the bulk of African rugby playing teams won´t even play in the qualification process! Another reason why Africa 1 needs to be removed as an automatic RWC team.
The Americas, in contrast has a far more complicated process. It has three regions and more teams than Africa. Eight from the Caribbean region will play, starting this month with the best team from Mexico, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Barbados, St Vincent, Trinidad & Tobago, Bahamas and Guyana then facing the best from CONSUR B (South America B) which has four teams - Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Costa Rica. The winner of this will face the winner of CONSUR A which is Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. The winner of that will then face the loser of the USA vs Canada. Either the USA or Canada will qualify with the loser facing the top South American side to qualify.
Or, in summary Africa has 10 teams. The Americas has 18. South America, the only continent without direct qualification has nine of these, only one less than Africa.
Africa 1 needs to be scrapped. It has proven to be a failure and is anything but based on merit. Replace the whole system with a Confederation Cup like I said. This resolves the problem immediately and if Namibia really are in the worlds top 20 then it would qualify for the World Cup just like Fiji, Japan and Romania. The system would also answer the point of the poster, welshglory who says it should be expanded. Expansion should happen, certainly but with more pools not more teams per pool. In any event expansion is an entirely different topic. This one is about getting the qualification correct, i.e. making sure the teams who qualify actually deserve to be there.
Having Namibia qualify by only facing African opponents is not only comparably unfair to what South America has but it is also not based on merit. There is no record of performances at World Cup´s or in intercontinental competition to suggest that Africa is of the level of other regions. Asia has one with Japan clearly deserving its place. The same cannot be said of Namibia. The solution is not to give South America a place to make it even. Rather, it is to change the qualification system altogether. Somthing that, sadly, the IRB has messed up entirely for 2015.
