2017 Rugby League World Cup
| 2017 World Cup | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Number of teams | 14 |
| Host countries |
 Australia New Zealand Papua New Guinea
|
| Matches played | 28 |
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2021 >
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The 2017 Rugby League World Cup will be the fifteenth staging of the Rugby League World Cup. It will be held in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea between 26 October and 2 December 2017.
It will be the main event of the year's Festival of World Cups.
At the 2010 Rugby League International Federation executive meeting, the New Zealand Rugby League made an early submission to co-host the 2017 tournament with Australia. The Rugby League World Cup was last held in Australia in 2008.
Two formal bids were subsequently received by the RLIF before a November 2012 deadline; the co-host bid from Australia and New Zealand and a bid from South Africa. On 19 February 2014, it was announced that the joint bid from Australia and New Zealand had won hosting rights.
Michael Brown, the CEO of several big name Australian sporting franchises and the 2015 AFC Asian Cup, was originally appointed CEO of the World Cup in 2015, but resigned less than a year later due to 'workload' and 'homesickness'. He was replaced by Andrew Hill.
It was announced on 3 August 2014 that 7 of the 8 quarter-finalists from the last World Cup would qualify automatically for the 2017 tournament; hosts Australia and New Zealand, plus England, Fiji, France, Samoa and Scotland. The USA, who were also 2013 quarter-finalists, were denied automatic qualification after a long-running internal governance dispute saw their RLIF membership temporarily suspended in 2014; later, once the matter was resolved, they were accepted into the qualification process. Papua New Guinea were initially set to be involved in the qualifying competition but were later granted automatic qualification, due to becoming co-hosts of the tournament. In addition to the eight automatic qualifiers, the remaining six spots will come from four different qualification zones; three from Europe, one from Asia/Pacific, one from Americas and one from Middle East/Africa.
Tonga were the first team to qualify from the qualification stage after winning the Asian-Pacific play-off. Lebanon were the second team to qualify from the qualification stage, after winning the Middle East-African play-off. The USA were the third team to qualify, winning the Americas qualification group.
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