The 2019-20 Rugby Africa Cup is the first season of a restructuring of international rugby union competition by Rugby Africa after a loss of broadcast sponsorship caused the cancellation of the 2019 Rugby Africa Gold Cup, itself only the third edition of a previous restructuring of the continent's tournament.
The new Rugby Africa Cup replaces the multi-tiered Gold, Silver, and Bronze Cups with a seeded group stage followed by a knockout round. This results in fewer matches being played, but also greatly reduced costs and travel times from the round-robin Gold Cup.
The group stage of the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Structure
The top sixteen nations in African rugby enter the competition, with the bottom eight entering in the elimination stage. Each team plays a single match and the four winners move onto the group stage, with four groups of three. The four group winners then enter the semi-finals.
Seeding
The sixteen participating teams were seeded as follows:
(World Rankings taken from November 13, 2019)
SeedTeam2018 positionWR Ranking1 1st Gold Cup 222 2nd Gold Cup 323 3rd Gold Cup 414 4th Gold Cup 395 5th Gold Cup 346 1st Silver Cup n/a7 6th Gold Cup 488 2nd Silver Cup 679 3rd Silver Cup 5110 4th Silver Cup 4311 5th Silver Cup 5412 1st Bronze Cup 9213 6th Silver Cup 7114 2nd Bronze Cup 9315 3rd Bronze Cup 9516 n/a 70
Elimination stage
The elimination stage matches will be played from November to December 2019
Elimination 1
Elimination 2
Elimination 3
Elimination 4
Group stage
The group stage will be held from June-July 2020
Group A
Group B 2019-2020 Rugby Africa Gold Cup
Group C
Group D
Knock-Out Stage
References