Analysing the Rugby League World Cup 2021

After a 12-month delay, the Rugby League World Cup 2021 will finally get under way this weekend when hosts England face Samoa in Newcastle.

We have already looked at some of the big talking points and odds plus seven players to watch but here we have analysed the trends from recent tournaments to predict how the action will unfold this year.

How will the Rugby League World Cup 2021 work?

The format of the Rugby League World Cup has changed over the years as more teams have entered, but since 1995 it has followed the same fundamental structure. Qualifying teams first contest a group stage followed by a series of knockout rounds to determine the winner.

At the Rugby League World Cup 2021 there will be four groups of four teams, with each nation playing the other three over a period of two weeks. The top two teams from each group will then progress to the quarter-finals, with winners and runners-up being paired together.

There is a short pause between the final group games on October 31 and the quarter-finals which run from November 4-6. We then have the two semi-finals in Leeds and London on November 11-12 before the final a week later at Old Trafford in Manchester on November 19.

How tough are the RLWC 2021 groups?

We can estimate how close the games in each group will be by comparing the current world rankings of each team. The sport’s governing body – International Rugby League – ranks teams based on their performance over the last four seasons.

Rankings are expressed as a percentage of the points earned by the top-ranked nation, which is currently New Zealand. They appear to have a straightforward task ahead of them in Group C, with none of their opponents in the current top 10.

Hosts England have a tougher job on their hands as their lowest-ranked opponent in Group A is 11th-placed Greece.

The other home nations – Scotland and Wales – are each in a group with two members of the world’s current top six, so may also struggle to impose themselves at the tournament.

When can the big teams meet each other?

The silver lining for England that the structure of the knockout phase will keep them apart from New Zealand – and pre-tournament favourites Australia – until the final.

This is due to the groups being paired in the quarter-final draw, with groups A and D drawn together in one path while teams progressing from B and C take another.

The world’s six highest-ranked teams are evenly distributed within the Rugby League World Cup 2021 draw: with England, Tonga and Papua New Guinea on one side and New Zealand, Australia and Fiji on the other.

This means that each of these six nations can only meet two of the others before the final itself.

Who has the best record?

Apart from Greece and Jamaica – both of whom are making the debuts at this year’s tournament – each of the other 14 qualified teams have featured in at least one of the last five World Cups.

Favourites Australia have by far the best record, having only lost two games out of the 28 they have played, which were the finals in 1995 and 2008 when they were defeated by England and New Zealand respectively. The other three tournaments in this period all ended in an Australian victory, two of which were also at Old Trafford.

New Zealand have won three quarters of their World Cup matches from 1995 onwards, while England (60%) and Tonga (56%) are the only other nations with a better than 50-50 win rate. We should not expect much from Lebanon or the Cook Islands, who have each won only one match since the first group stage was contested.

We can also compare each team’s scorelines to see who is likeliest to inflict – or suffer – large defeats. Surprisingly only four of the 14 teams who have featured in recent tournaments have a net positive points difference: Australia, New Zealand, England and Tonga.

These four are also the only sides with an average of fewer than 20 points conceded per game, so it’s hard to look beyond them when trying to predict large winning margins.

The Cook Islands appear the most likely to struggle at the Rugby League World Cup 2021 with an average 20-point deficit in their six matches since 1995: 17 points scored to 37 conceded per game.

While nobody can match that concession rate, it is Scotland who are the least prolific scorers with an average of just 14 points – this dropped to just eight per game during their dire showing in 2017.

England’s Group A opponents France have fared surprisingly badly on the biggest stage; despite winning four of their 16 matches they have the second-worst average result. Coincidentally these two have met at each of the last two tournaments, with England winning 34-6 in 2013 and 36-6 four years later.

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