Analysis of Cup draw

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Authored by: Ian Hill
on Wednesday, July 16 2008 @ 04:06 pm ACST

Realistically two distinct divisions of eight would have been better but there were two problems with that. First, a few nations (Denmark, Sweden) may have been put out at being in Division 2. Second, the real "gaps" seem to be between 4 and 5, and 12 and 13. There is a clear top 4 (NZ, PNG, USA, Ireland), a clear bottom 4 (India, China, PPT, Finland). The eight in the middle are relatively experienced and evenly matched and to split those eight out with four in Div 1 and four in Div 2 would have been very problematic, and I think this was the key reason behind not going for two divisions.

Within the 4-8-4 split mentioned above, I don't see any great need to seed further, and the poolings should have been done geographically. It's good that the pairs of Denmark-Sweden, GB-Ireland, USA-Canada are split but a bit odd that neighbours Sweden and Finland are in the same pool and also with Ireland. With five European countries at the cup, surely it would have made sense to have the two most distant (Ireland and Finland) in the same pool and the other three in distinct pools. Also isn't pool A a bit Asia-Pacific centric? To that end I would have swapped Sweden and Japan and perhaps even Canada and Samoa to mix things up a bit.

The IC should be used to give nations who cannot often play against each other a chance to do so.

I also wonder about the notion of the "top 4". Recently GB have beaten Ireland and Canada have beaten the USA so it might be interesting to see if some assumed rankings might get challenged at this IC. To that end the Ireland v Canada match looks to be one of the most significant games in the group matches.

The 4 pools of 4 idea also means that only the top team in each pool goes to the semis which means it's almost certain that one loss means you're out. Given a limit of five games, two separate divisions would have meant the top two in each sub-pool of four would have gone on to semi-finals and made the whole thing much less cut-throat.

Analysis of Cup draw

Authored by: Aaron Richard
on Wednesday, July 16 2008 @ 04:41 pm ACST

I agree regarding Finland and Sweden being in the one group.

The chances are that neither of their classification matches will be against other
European sides, but still it surely wouldn't be too hard to shuffle one or two
teams so that there weren't any neighbours in the same pool.

Analysis of Cup draw

Authored by: Eurofooty
on Wednesday, July 16 2008 @ 04:45 pm ACST

Ian has a valid point in that it would have been nice to see a team from Asia/Pacific in the euro-centric Pool D. Sweden plays Finland every year twice which is great for both countries as it builds both rivarly on-the-field and cameradie off-the-field. But between cups, there is almost zero chance of ever getting to play China or India.

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