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The pool stages of the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France have been drawn today with many familiar fixtures set to take place in three years.
Wales will face Australia and Fiji in their group as they did in 2019 and 2007. It is also the second successive World Cup in which Ireland and Scotland have been drawn together, this time together in a group with reigning champions South Africa.
England have managed to find themselves in arguably the easiest group as they often do with last year’s finalists set to play Japan and Argentina in 2023. Hosts France will face three-time winners New Zealand and Six Nations rivals Italy.
Only 12 teams have qualified for the tournament so far, with eight qualifiers to be finalised by November 2022. The sides are divided into four pools of five, with the top two from each pool going through to the quarter-finals.
The tournament will be played 8 September-21 October 2023 across 10 French cities, with the largest venue Paris’ Stade de France and the smallest the Stade de Nice. The full tournament fixture list, with date, location and times of all games, will be announced at the end of February 2021.
The draw seedings were based on world rankings from January this year. Positions after this year’s autumn Tests would normally be used to form the draw bands but some teams – for example South Africa and Japan – have not played in 2020 as a result of the Covid crisis. For future tournaments, the Rugby World Cup board is planning for the draw to take place less than a year before the tournament to make sure that the pools better reflect performance at the time.
Modern players like Wayne Rooney honed their skills playing street football.