PunBB

The 2011 World Cup of Rugby will be held in New Zealand from September 9 - October 23 and as most of you probably (hopefully) know, Canada has qualified. Now I am not a huge Rugby fan, I was first interested in it in the last World Cup back in 2007. I don't watch any club rugby, only international matches interest me. It is my understanding that we have a half decent team this time around and we weren't drawn into the hardest of groups so we all have reason to be optimistic. Qualifying for the quarter-finals would be a huge success for Canada. I believe the tournament will only be televised by Setanta unfortinatly but hopefully Sportsnet will get the rights to Canada's matches as they have televised their qualifiers vs. USA. The tournament format is pretty simple, 4 groups of 5 teams each play eachother once. The top two teams advance to the quarter-finals, the third place team automatically qualifies for the 2015 Rugby World Cup (but do not advance) and teams placed 4th and 5th are eliminated. Here are how the groups look....

POOL A
CANADA
France
Japan
New Zealand
Tonga

POOL B
Argentina
England
Georgia
Romania
Scotland

POOL C
Australia
Ireland
Italy
Russia
USA

POOL D
Fiji
Namibia
Samoa
South Africa
Whales

I realize the tournament is still a few months away so this post is a little early but I figured I would post it now because Canada will be playing the USA in what is called the Churchhill Cup. The match will be played on Saturday August 6 in Toronto at BMO Field. This will basically be Canada's final warm-up/farewell match before the big tournament.

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I just put the Canada games up here. This is gonna be a great RWC! I am actually an AllBlacks fan but will cheer on USA and Canada when not involved with AB's.

World Cup Games Schedule - sorted by date
Click here to view games by city Date NZ Time Teams Pool Stadium City

Wed Sept 14 17.00 Tonga v Canada A Northland Events Centre Whangarei

Sun Sept 18 20.30 France v Canada A McLean Park Napier

Tue Sept 27 17.00 Canada v Japan A McLean Park Napier

Sun Oct 2 15.30 New Zealand v Canada A Wellington Regional Stadium Wellington

TSN got the rights for this and will be televising the games on TSN and TSN2. I'm really excited to watch this.

Here is the complete broadcast schedule for the entire tournament from the TSN.ca Rugby section:

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The time zone difference is going to make it tough to watch alot of the games unless your a night hawk.....