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The RWC has the dumbest system for awarding match points

91Jmay

International Coach
Um yes, perfectly happy and it would have been perfectly fair. Bonus points for losing participants is something that's fair for a primary school sports day, but has no place in a major international tournament.

I also think that if your goal is to promote try-scoring rugby, then it would be more effective to change the ratio of points awarded for a penalty kick compared to a converted try (perhaps so that it's more in line with league's 2:6 ratio) than offering a bonus point for scoring some arbitrary number of them.
Unless refs started dishing out cards left right and center this would result in boring, slow rugby with less tries.
 

mr_mister

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
What bothers me is that conversion goal is 2 while a penalty goal is 3. They are a both place kicks at goal, it seems silly. I'd streamline that at least
 

BoyBrumby

Englishman
I'm not really a rugby follower, so can anyone tell me how the bonus point system for the world cup makes any sense?

Ok, I can kinda at least understand the bonus point for scoring tries. Rugby can be a pretty turgid sport to watch, especially in world cups when teams tend to be ultra defensive, so providing an incentive to toss the ball around and go for tries is understandable. But the bonus point for finishing within 7 is beyond stupid. I can't think of any other major sports tournament where a team gets points for only just losing. You don't get a point in cricket for losing by 1 run. You don't get a point in the soccer World Cup for conceeding a match losing goal in injury time. It's fair to use that stuff to decide who advances at the end of the group stage, but having it actually influence the number of points a team takes out of a match?

I bring this up now because I think it's totally rubbish that the points taken from this morning's upset results in Japan getting 4 points to SA's 2. Why on earth do SA deserve to take away half as many points as the team that beat them? It's utter rubbish, and could have serious implications for who advances at the end of pool play.
Pretty sure in some multi nation ODI tournies there are losing bonus points.
 

Furball

Evil Scotsman
The only thing that really bugs me is that the losing bonus point is the equivalent of the patronising hair rub while saying 'well done, you did really well and ran them close, have a point for trying.'

Which is fine if it's Japan narrowly losing to South Africa but the Springboks shouldn't be getting bonus anything for losing narrowly to Japan.
 

hendrix

Hall of Fame Member
You don't reward a smaller team differently than you would a bigger team ffs. This isn't test rankings pre world cup. This is the world cup.
 

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