World Rugby announced the participation of Canada, Fiji, Japan, Samoa, Tonga, and the USA in a revamped edition of the Pacific Nations Cup, scheduled from August to September. The six teams are divided into two groups, with Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji forming one group and Canada, the USA, and Japan forming the other.
Throughout the tournament, all teams will host matches.
One might wonder about the changes or rebranding that World Rugby is referring to since these are the same Tier 2 teams competing against each other in the past Pacific Nations Cup.
Notably, Samoa and Tonga have been excluded from Sir Bill Beaumont and World Rugby's new Rugby tournament called the World League or Nations Cup. In contrast, neighbouring Pacific islands Fiji and Japan have been invited to this unique tournament, which the chair of World Rugby has described as a "quantum leap."
Its certainly a leap for the tier one nations but some tier two nations such as the South America Rugby Union President, Sebastian Pineyrua is not buying into the grand announcement from the World Rugby as he says “It will kill rugby,” he told the Daily Mail last week. “It will be impossible to compete with those teams in four or five years. They’re going to go up and the others will go down.”
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