The 2023 Rugby World Cup will open on a Friday night in Paris when France, the hosts, take on New Zealand, at the very least the sport’s most famous team, and usually its best. In a world ravaged by pestilence, the mere thought of such an event at the Stade de France restores some measure of excitement, not to mention hope that the world might have returned to normal by then. If France continue on their current trajectory, there is every chance that by 8 September 2023 they might be considered the best in the world. Of all rugby’s great rivalries, the one between France and New Zealand is the most colourful, featuring as it does some of the game’s most outrageous upsets (which France tend to win) and some of its most hideous, stomach-turning annihilations (which New Zealand tend to inflict). We might expect sufficient parity between the two to launch the event with an appropriately compelling match. Whatever the result, the chances of the tournament ending with the same fixture at the same stadium on 28 October are very much live. The more observant will have noticed the unusual wait between the first and last game of 50 days. This will be the longest Rugby World Cup; the usual format stretching across seven weekends having been extended by a week. In response to relentless lobbying over the years on behalf of disadvantaged lesser rugby nations, all teams will have a minimum of five days’ rest between fixtures. In a further nod to player welfare, squad sizes will expand from 31 to 33. “The France 2023 organising committee is very proud of the match schedule,” said its chief executive, Claude Atcher. “This new format will provide a more equitable platform for all teams involved.” Progress has indeed been made from the dark days of the 2003 event, when each of the major nations enjoyed neat week-long breaks between their weekend matches, while the other nations had matches fitted in around them, sometimes with a break of four days, sometimes 13. That it has taken 20 years for the new format to be arrived at is at best a reflection of rugby’s sluggish wheels of administration. Even so, some teams’ schedules, inevitably, are more equitable than others. Africa 1, for example, likely to be Namibia, have a match every sixth day and will be heading home (assuming no progress from the same pool as France and the All Blacks) more than a month before the final. Their 19-day pool schedule is the shortest, three days shorter than the most inconvenienced of the already-qualified teams, South Africa. The average length of pool campaign for the qualifiers is 23.6 days; for the qualified it is 27.7. But there is much to commend the schedule, besides its minimum breaks. All matches will be played from Wednesday to Sunday; each of the nine host cities will have a previous quarter-finalist visit it; there will be double-headers in several cities, including Marseille, where England will face Argentina on the Saturday of the opening weekend, followed by South Africa v Scotland on the Sunday. Marseille will forever be associated with the double-header of quarter-finals it hosted in 2007, when England beat Australia and Fiji flirted with victory over South Africa the next day. Once again, the cosmopolitan capital of the south will assume a starring role, the Stade Vélodrome sharing the quarter-finals with the Stade de France. Having opened in Marseille, England will head east along the riviera to Nice to take on Japan, before completing their fixtures in Lille. Wales will open in Bordeaux against Fiji, their nemeses in 2007, and finish their pool matches at the scene of that nadir, Nantes. Scotland will follow England to Nice for their second match, before heading north to Lille, then Paris, where they will conclude their round-robins with a likely-decisive tie against Ireland.