Minnows being shafted at World Cup

Japan were always going to struggle with their short turnaround against Scotland. Photo / Getty

It is one of the hot-button topics of the World Cup: how do you make a draw that is fair to every team?

The answer, for a start, is you lock broadcasters out of the room, but that's never going to happen, so instead we get lopsided draws that almost invariably hinder the minnows more than the Tier One nations.

World Rugby have made no effort to hide that this is a tournament of the haves and have-nots. Analyse the draw and you will find that not one 'big' team, those considered genuine title chances, plays another contender off short rest.

The grave irony, of course, is the Tier One teams have the requisite depth to deal with quick turnarounds, but it the lower tier teams that by and large get lumbered with them.

As Japan coach Eddie Jones implied after his team collapsed to Scotland off short rest, the bottom-feeders should just be grateful to be there.

"I said I wasn't going to use that as an excuse and I won't... You need a six-day turnaround [to recover] but that's not the case [here]. You've got to accept it and suck it up."

However, when one of the contenders is effected by short rest, the issue gets more mainstream airplay.

"It's something we all need to be aware of because it's a pretty brutal game at the moment," Wales' coach Warren Gatland said prior to his team's meeting with Fiji off a short week. "It's important we consider and look after the welfare of our players as well.

"I'm not complaining about the short turnaround because we've known about that for a long time. We've had to prepare for that."

In a normal season, a six-day turnaround between tests would be considered tough, but that is not realistic at a World Cup where every day of the weekend, including Friday nights, has to be utlised, along with occasional midweek dates.

Also working in the organisers' favour is geography. The distances between the various venues in England and Wales are short, so no long-haul flights or crossing of time zones is required.

So, for the purposes of this exercise, we will consider five days and under as a short turnaround. The teams' short weeks are as follows:

POOL A
Australia - 4 days between Fiji and Uruguay (won 65-3)
England - no short turnarounds
Wales - 5 days between England and Fiji (won 23-13)
Fiji - 5 days between England and Australia (lost 13-28)
Uruguay - 4 days between Fiji and England (Oct 10)

England, as hosts, get the plum draw in the Pool of Death, with no short turnarounds. They will get the tournament's weakest team, Uruguay, on a short turnaround on October 10. That could be a sporting slaughter.

Fiji has been handed the roughest draw. This is a good Fiji team who had the ability to upset one of the three Tier One nations, but facing Australia five days after meeting the hosts in the opener was never conducive to a fair fight. To compound matters, they then faced Wales on their home ground in Cardiff. It is close to a rigged draw as you can get.

No Tier One team faced another Tier One team on a short turnaround, though Wales faced arguably the strongest Tier Two nation on short rest.

POOL B
South Africa - 4 days between Scotland and USA
Scotland - 4 days between Japan and USA (won 39-16)
Samoa - no short turnarounds
Japan - 4 days between South Africa and Scotland (lost 10-45)
USA - 4 days between South Africa and Japan (Oct 11)

South Africa and Samoa get the plum draws, no doubt Samoa's privileged status had something to do with them being royally shafted at the previous edition where they played both Wales (lost 10-17) and South Africa (lost 5-13) off short rest.

This time around it's Japan who got bladed by the schedulers, meeting Scotland just four days after playing another Tier One country, South Africa. Strangely, World Rugby boss Brett Gosper didn't think japan had it tough. By way of a strange sort of calculus, Gosper believed Japan's overall rest days was the highlight of the Pool B draw.

The sad thing is, Japan's plight would have gone largely unnoticed were it not for the fact they beat South Africa.

"The four-day turnaround [is] difficult and, to be fair, I thought Japan found that difficult," said Scotland coach Vern Cotter.

Scotland met and beat USA off short rest.

POOL C
New Zealand - 4 days between Argentina and Namibia (won 58-14)
Argentina - 5 days between NZ and Georgia (won 54-9)
Georgia - 5 days between NZ and Namibia (Oct 7)
Tonga - 5 days between Georgia and Argentina (Oct 4); 5 days between Argentina and New Zealand (Oct 9)
Namibia - 5 days between NZ and Tonga (lost 21-35); 4 days between Georgia and Argentina (Oct 11)

In this most lopsided of pools - two strong teams, three weak - every team has to face at least one short turnaround, but two of the minnows get two short-rest matches.

Still, it's not difficult to work out who's been mollycoddled, with New Zealand and Argentina getting Namibia and Georgia respectively after their short turnarounds.

Tonga has undoubtedly got the raw deal here, facing both Tier One teams off short breaks. Only pride or Steve Hansen's largesse should stop the All Blacks running up a cricket score at Newcastle's atmospheric St James' Park on October 11.

POOL D
Ireland - no short turnarounds
France - 4 days between Italy and Romania (won 38-11)
Italy - no short turnarounds
Canada - 5 days between Italy and France (lost 18-41); 5 days between France and Romania (Oct 6)
Romania - 4 days between France and Ireland (lost 10-44); 5 days between Canada and Italy (Oct 11)

France are the only Tier One team to 'suffer' a short turnaround, although Romania was never shaping as a massive threat.

The Canadians and Romanians have endured a fairly horrific draw, both facing two Tier One teams within five days of each other (four in Romania's case).

Said Canada coach Kieran Crowley, drawing on his days as an All Black: "The biggest challenge when you have short turnarounds [is] the mental side of it.

"You put a lot into it physically, but you also put a lot into it mentally. When I was involved in test-match rugby it used to take me about a week to come back down before I was ready to go again."

To get deeper into the issue, we need to look at the second-half of the performances of teams that have been forced to endure short turnarounds. This is where the results seem counter-intuitive. If you look at the points differentials at half and fulltime, you find that more teams (six) have come away with a positive second half split than negative (four).

Again, it is not an exact science because we can see from the above that not all short turnarounds are created equal, but for what it's worth.

(Short-rest teams in bold)
Japan v Scotland: differential -25
Australia v Fiji: differential +15
New Zealand v Namibia: differential -12
Argentina v Georgia: differential +35
Australia v Uruguay: differential +6
Scotland v USA: differential +37
Ireland v Romania: differential -4
Namibia v Tonga: differential +16
Wales v Fiji: differential -12
Canada v France: differential +1

There are other factors involved in these games other than short rest. For example, the fact that the All Blacks performed 12 points worse in the second half against Namibia is unlikely to be due to short rest as they had made a raft of changes to their playing XV.

This also doesn't take into account style or gameplans. Scotland are a side that have twice looked average in the first 40 before pouring on points in the second as their pressure starts to pay dividends (whether that will work so well against a top side will be tested this weekend when they face South Africa at Newcastle).

Clearly the short turnarounds were tough for Japan and Wales, arguably the two short-rest games with the most riding on them, but at best you'd have to say it is inconclusive as to whether the draw has wrecked any team's chances of progressing through to the knockouts.

That should be a moot point, anyway. Until World Rugby gets a more equitable way of putting together a World Cup schedule, justice is not being seen to be done.