Date and venue for final Rugby League World Cup qualifier locked in
Papua New Guinea ace Keven Appo is tackled by Cook Islands star Makahesi Makatoa at the delayed 2021 Rugby League World Cup
The final spot for next year’s Rugby League World Cup will be decided in November as part of this year’s Pacific Championships.
The International Rugby League have revealed the full draw for the blockbuster tournaments which will once again take place following the conclusion of the NRL season.
New Zealand, Samoa and Tonga will compete in the top tier of the cups, the Pacific Cup, with Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Fiji locking horns in the Pacific Bowl.
But the final of the Bowl will be played one week earlier, on November 1 – due to the fact that the Cook Islands are involved in the game that will determine the tenth and final team to play in the men’s World Cup next year.
They will face South Africa as part of a triple-header event at Sydney’s CommBank Stadium on Sunday November 9. The winner takes the last spot in the tournament, which has been reduced to just ten teams this time around.
Two weeks earlier, the Northern Hemisphere qualifier between France and Jamaica will be held in Albi, with the winner of that game also going to the World Cup.
But it will only be after the Cook Islands and South Africa square off will we know the full ten-team line-up for the tournament next year.
The two nations have met once before, in 2019 when the Cook Islands won 66-6.
However, they will do battle again later this year with qualification to the biggest tournament in the sport now on the line and up for grabs.
Cook Islands are the only non-qualified IRL full member from the Asia-Pacific region, while South Africa are the only non-qualified full IRL member from the Middle East and Africa region.
The winners of those two qualifiers will join the eight quarter-finalists from 2022 – Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, England, Papua New Guinea, Lebanon and Fiji – in the main event.
