With room for twenty sides in this season's end of year World Cup, the ASRL and WRLA have announced a qualifying tournament to be held in the near future. The ASRL is currently looking for a host (and someone will to sim games) for the tournament.

The sides already guaranteed a place in the tournament are:
- Australia
- Ireland
- England
- New Zealand
- Scotland
- Tonga
- South Africa
- Papua New Guinea
- AA/TSI
- Wales
- Fiji
- France
- Samoa
- USA

The remaining nine sides will fight it out for the last six spots, meaning competition will be fierce between the lower ranked nations. A draw has yet to be announced, but it is expected to be seen in the next few days.

Participants
Lebanon
Cook Islands
Japan
Germany
Russia
Greece
Italy
West Indies
Malta

It's Lebanon-Malta you stooge

No it 'aint. Mick Treacy is coaching Malta. They're large enough to support their own international team.

HAHAHA!

Yes I am.

Scott magro will be participating in this match as our best player.

Slight change. Qualifying will come down to matches between:

Malta vs. Italy
Greece vs. Russia

Winners will be in the World Cup.

Unless someone can come up with a feasible format for a twenty two team cup? :P

Have a knockout between the sides that have not quilified.

Or have 2 5 team groupd and 2 6 teams groups for the early rounds.

22 side WC?

Simple, really - the only problem is deciding on the correct seeding for all 22 sides...

...and hearing the groans of those not in the top ten sides, because my proposal will not make them too happy...

...here it is:

1) First round - top ten seeds receive a bye. Next twelve play a home-and-home series - 11 seed takes on 22 seed, 12 seed takes on 21 seed, and so on...

...six sides progress, six go home...and the seeds are recalculated based on 16 sides.

2) Second round - Four groups of four sides - each plays a home-and-home series with the other sides in their group - top two advance to the knockout stage - Round 3.

Groups, seeds within each for Round 2:

A - 1, 8, 9, 16
B - 2, 7, 10, 15
C - 3. 6. 11. 14
D - 4, 5, 12, 13

3) Third round - Knockout, single game format, exact seeding placement to be determined - all sides guaranteed three games in this stage, with 1st through 8th places determined here.

I like your proposal, Theo, with the slight exception of the home and home series of the second round. I might be wrong, but would that mean two games between each side? If so, I'd rather just have 'neutral' venues for sides from outside the 'host nation' and give the host countries (in this case Australia, New Zealand, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea) home games.

Or, to avoid complication, we could just have the four teams play-off and run a twenty team, lol. :lol:

Actually... I just saw Micky's proposal. I think that's the best if we're to let everyone have a fair go. The last World Cup basically flopped because a lot of ASRL coaches didn't get a game.