PARIS (AP) — The Rugby World Cup quarterfinal lineups are decided after a month of pool-stage games drew to a close with top-ranked Ireland and host France powering into the last eight with convincing victories.
Ireland immediately swept away any thoughts of an upset in its last pool game against Six Nations rival Scotland by scoring its first try in the second minute on the way to a 36-0 lead at Stade de France.
The Scots pulled two tries back and it ended 36-14, but the Irish had done all the damage by then and it once again underlined Ireland's status as the best team in the world and the favorite for its first World Cup title.
France isn't far behind on current form and brushed aside the challenge of Italy 60-7 to also head to the quarterfinals with four wins out of four.
The northern hemisphere's top two teams will test their credentials in colossal quarterfinals against the southern hemisphere's best.
Ireland will face three-time champion New Zealand on Saturday and France will come up against defending champion South Africa, another three-time winner, on Sunday in two of the biggest quarterfinal matchups in years at the Rugby World Cup.
Ireland beat South Africa in the pool stage and France outplayed New Zealand in the opening game so its north vs. south take two this weekend, the crucial difference being it's knockout rugby this time.
Those quarterfinals feature the top four teams in the world and two of them will be out come Sunday night.
England and Wales won their pools on the other side of the draw to make it a clean sweep of northern hemisphere teams topping the groups at the Rugby World Cup, the first time that has happened.
Wales plays Argentina in the opening quarterfinal on Saturday after Argentina came through a winner-takes-all crunch game against Japan to see which one of those was going through.
England is up against Fiji on Sunday in the quarters having survived a huge scare in its last pool game against Samoa by pulling off a late comeback to edge the Samoans 18-17. England was already through but needed to dig very deep not to head to the knockout stage off a loss.
Fiji didn't manage to avoid an upset in the 40th and last pool-stage game of the tournament when Portugal made history in a thriller.
The Portuguese won their first-ever match at the Rugby World Cup after leading Fiji twice in Toulouse and losing the lead twice only for wing Rodrigo Marta to score with two minutes to play and Samuel Marques to kick the game-clinching conversion in the dying seconds for a 24-23 upset.
Portugal made sure the underdogs had the final say of the pool stage. The big guns will take it from here.
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AP Rugby World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby
