The 2002 Women's Rugby World Cup was the second World Cup fully sanctioned by the sports governing body the International Rugby Board

International Rugby Board

The International Rugby Board is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. It was founded in 1886 as the International Rugby Football Board by the unions of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. England refused to join until 1890. The International Rugby Football Board changed its name to the...

 (IRB). The tournament was held in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

. The format was the same as the previous tournament and again 16 nations competed.

For the first time a pre-tournament qualification match took place to decide Asia's second representative but other than that all competitors took part by invitation. 14 of the 16 teams taking part were the same as in 1998 but two lowest ranked European teams (Sweden and Russia) were replaced by teams from Asia (Japan) and Oceania (Samoa).

The competition was won by defending champions, New Zealand.

Qualifier

World Cup Tournament

Although not strictly speaking a knock-out as - in theory - a team losing a game on Day 1 could still qualify dependent on results on Day 2, in practice this was a complex tournament that is best understood by means of the following graphics. Note that this should not be taken to imply that the draw for any round of games was predetermined - each successive round was drawn using seedings and rankings based on previous matches:

Cup (positions 1-4)

Ranking matches 5-8

Teams knocked out in the Cup quarter-finals

Ranking matches 9-16

Teams defeated in the first round of pool matches

Ranking matches 13-16

Teams defeated in the first round of the ranking matches for 9-16

Pool A

Position	Nation	Games				Points		Table points	Overall ranking
		played	won	drawn	lost	for	against
1		2	2	0	0	153	3	6	1st
2		2	1	0	1	33	36	4	8th
3		2	1	0	1	77	30	4	9th
4		2	0	0	2	0	194	2	16th

Pool B

Position	Nation	Games				Points		Table points	Overall ranking
		played	won	drawn	lost	for	against
1		2	2	0	0	52	21	6	4th
2		2	1	0	1	96	21	4	5th
3		2	1	0	1	49	41	4	11th
4		2	0	0	2	10	124	2	14th

Pool C

Position	Nation	Games				Points		Table points	Overall ranking
		played	won	drawn	lost	for	against
1		2	2	0	0	76	14	6	3rd
2		2	1	0	1	67	13	4	6th
3		2	1	0	1	39	66	4	12th
4		2	0	0	2	3	92	2	15th

Pool D

Position	Nation	Games				Points		Table points	Overall ranking
		played	won	drawn	lost	for	against
1		2	2	0	0	67	0	6	2nd
2		2	1	0	1	13	14	4	7th
3		2	1	0	1	25	13	4	10th
4		2	0	0	2	0	79	2	13th

13th-16th

9th-12th

5th-8th

Semi-finals

15th/16th

13th/14th

11th/12th

9th/10th

7th/8th

5th/6th

3rd/4th

Final

Final Table

190

95

35

111

9

17

26

76

14

Place	Nation	Games		Points
		won	lost	for	against	difference
1		4	0	202	12
2		3	1	138	43
3		3	1	93	58
4		2	2	85	94
5		3	1	137	26
6		2	2	41	53
7		2	2	63	54
8		1	3	83	66
9		3	1	56	30
10		2	2	126	50
11		2	2	72	58
12		1	3	45	121
13		2	2	58	95
14	Ireland Ireland women's national rugby union team The Ireland rugby union team, represents both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in rugby union-Squad:Squad for 2011 Women's RBS 6 Nations*Niamh Briggs *Niamh Kavanagh *Lynne Cantwell...	1	3	18	97
15		1	3	33	180
16		0	4	19	232

External links

• IRB reports (from Webarchive)
• Information on the 2002 Women's Rugby World Championship (in Spanish)