World Cup draw announced

The draw for next year's World Cup has been released by the IRB:

Pool A: New Zealand, Wales, Australia, South Africa
Pool B: England, USA, Ireland, Kazakhstan
Pool C: France, Canada, Scotland, Sweden

So - England will take on the USA, Ireland and Kazakhstan for a place in the final stages?

Well, no. Possibly not. Crucially the actual format for the tournament has not yet been published, but whatever the IRB come up with it can safely be assumed that it will be nothing like as simple as that. Despite one or two media organisations leaping to this conclusion (such as the BBC - though it is nice to see them acknowledge that the game exists after all!), no IRB-organised world cup has ever been that simple. In fact, if the same format as 2006 world cup is used then it would mean that the teams that England will definately not play would be USA, Ireland and Kazakhstan!

So at this stage information about which pool any team has been drawn is actually pretty meaningless - what is rather more important is what this tells us about seedings, which appear to be:

1. New Zealand; 2. England; 3. France; 4. Canada; 5. USA; 6. Wales

7. Australia; 8. Ireland; 9. Scotland; 10. Sweden; 11. Kazakhstan; 12. South Africa

No team from the bottom half of the seeds has ever beaten a team in the top half - so it looks a tough draw for Australia and Ireland.