Talk:2017 Women's Rugby World Cup

Smaller squads

In the men's 2015 Rugby World Cup each squad had 31 players. In the women's Rugby World Cup each squad has 28 players. Is this because of less matches in the women's Rugby World Cup or is there another reason? Mobile mundo (talk) 18:15, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

This article needs to explain why there are no African qualifiers

This article needs to explain why there are no African qualifiers. In the previous 3 World Cups, South Africa were there as African qualifiers. This time we are shown there are no African qualifiers. But we should be told why not. (I might do so myself, except that I have no idea why not). Tlhslobus (talk) 04:09, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I've not been able to find out why, either, Tlhslobus - there's nothing at South Africa women's national rugby union team. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:10, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

• Some further Googling and Wikipedia-reading suggests to me that it may be something to do with things like money, politics, and sexism. Here Fiona Coghlan, an ambassador for this World Cup, was interviewed and said "We only had 18 teams looking to qualify this year. Really strong teams that had 15s programs in the past, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Samoa not even looking to qualify. We need to look at that prior to worrying about a fairer pool system."

• In the above, "not even looking to qualify" seems to be misleading, at least as regards Samoa, because our article on Oceania Qualification (here) says (without any supporting citations) : "2016: Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Samoa. With their long history of World Cup participation, the latter seemed to be favourites to become the region’s entry. However, in a surprise move, Oceania Rugby then refused Samoa’s entry on the same grounds as World Rugby had barred Kenya and Uganda – the lack of a robust domestic women’s fifteens rugby tournament (almost all of Samoa’s squads in past years have come from players living and playing in New Zealand and Australia)." This still says nothing about South Africa, although Coghlan's words "...that had 15s programs in the past..." may indicate that a South Africa's women's domestic league has been scrapped for financial reasons, and/or as a side-effect of the long-running dispute between the SA Rugby Union and the ANC Government over alleged racism in SA Rugby.

• World Rugby may also have financial and/or sexist reasons for wanting to have as few women's teams as possible, and the main teams themselves may want as few one-sided games as possible (Coghlan also says "The level of competition looking to qualify needs to improve so that when they come in, if we do get to four pools, you're not getting walk-over games with cricket scores because I don't think that's good for the game. It's not good for either team at any level.").

• But much of this is currently just speculation on my part, because there seems to be only tiny scraps of info on the subject available from the likes of Google and Wikipedia. So I suspect none of this is easily usable in our article, though somebody more skilful than me might be able to make some use of the Coghlan interview. Or somebody else may be able to find some better sources than I've managed here. Tlhslobus (talk) 08:32, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Good find; I'll do some more looking, too. Bastun^{Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ!} 09:04, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

@TheMightyPeanut: as they edit a lot of South African rugby articles so may know more about this. AIRcorn (talk) 18:39, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Broadcasters

Which broadcasters are showing the final live and which broadcasters are showing delayed coverage of the final? Mobile mundo (talk) 00:11, 26 August 2017 (UTC)