What’s happening?
The draw to determine who Ireland will meet in the pool stages of the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia will take place on Wednesday, December 3rd at 9am Irish time.
What will the draw decide?
The draw will divide the 24 participating teams into six pools of four, all of whom will play each other once during the pool stages.
Saturday Shambles wraps up Ireland's November window
How does the draw work?
The 24 teams have already been placed in one of four bands based on their world ranking on November 24th. The top six ranked teams are in Band 1, with 7-12 in Band 2, 13-18 in Band 3 and 19-24 in Band 4.
On Wednesday, one team will be drawn from each of the four bands to make up a pool.
RM Block
What band are Ireland in?
After a mixed of Autumn Nations Series, Ireland are now fourth in the world rankings. Andy Farrell’s side therefore join reigning World champions and world number ones South Africa in Band 1, as well as New Zealand (second), England (third), France (fifth) and Argentina (sixth).
As a Band 1 team, Ireland will be the top-ranked side in their pool and will be joined by one team from each of the three lower bands.
How are the other bands looking?
Band 2: Australia, Fiji, Scotland, Italy, Wales and Japan.
Band 3: Georgia, Spain, Uruguay, USA, Chile and Tonga.
Band 4: Samoa, Portugal, Romania, Hong Kong-China, Zimbabwe, Canada.
As hosts, Australia already know they’ll be placed in Pool A so they’ll be in action in the opening game of the tournament on October 1st, 2027.
What else will the draw tell us?
The draw will give us some idea as to what Ireland’s path through the tournament might look like in its various guises depending on their pool and where they finish in said pool. That’s obviously assuming they make it to the knock-out stages, but it feels fair to say they’ve earned such optimism.
The first knock-out round after the pool stages – the Round of 16, a RWC first as part of the expanded format – will be made up of the six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the four best third-placed teams (based on their points from the pool stages).
There, the winners of Pool A, B, C and D will face one of the third-place pool finishers. The winners of Pool E and F will play the runners-up of Pool D and B respectively, while the runners-up from Pool A and C will be drawn against their counterparts from Pool E and F respectively.
That will all become a bit easier to digest once we know the make-up of the pools, so don’t overthink it just yet.
We’ll have updates once we know who’s cannonballed into what pool, and you can be sure many a Rugby World Cup permutations piece will be penned between next Wednesday and October 2027.
