RWC lookahead: Who could Black Ferns face in run to final?

The make-up of this year's quarterfinals for the Rugby World Cup are starting to take shape, meaning the Black Ferns' road to the final - and who they'll have to beat along the way - is starting to become clearer as well.

Well, as clear as they can with the complexities of sorting three pools of four teams into eight finalists.

Unlike the men's tournament which makes draws easy with four pools, resulting in the top two of each group simply advancing to a predetermined bracket, the women's event has to go through some extra qualifying marks to figure out the final eight.

Finding those eight isn't as bad as it sounds for the most part; the top two teams of each pool make up six of the eight qualifiers.

The last, and lowest, two spots however go to the two highest ranked third seeds from the three groups and regardless of whether they have more points in their group than a second-seeded team from another pool, they will still only contest the seventh and eighth seed.

From there, the knockout stage follows a basic bracket where first plays eighth in the first quarterfinal, second plays seventh in the second quarterfinal and so on through to seeds four and five playing in the fourth and final quarterfinal.

That then leads to the winner of the first quarterfinal playing the winner of the fourth quarterfinal - or in a perfect world the first seed playing the fourth seed while the second and third ranked qualifiers play on the other side of the draw.

Win in that round and you're through to the final.

Still with me?

So how does this all affect the Black Ferns' journey to Eden Park?

The Black Ferns have already qualified for the knockout stages thanks to their bonus point wins against Australia and Wales and should they add a third big victory this weekend against Scotland in Whangārei, they will qualify as the top seed for the knockouts.

In that situation, they will likely, and perhaps almost anticlimactically, then face the loser of Australia and Wales again in the quarterfinals.

The Pool A rematch is due to two factors; England being denied a bonus point from their thrilling contest against fellow heavyweight France, and USA - who will likely qualify as the other third seed from Pool B - having a bonus point from their 30-17 win over Japan, while both Wales and Australia are without any bonus points to date.

The only way this changes is if the loser of Australia-Wales picks up a bonus point in a tight loss and the USA are blown out by Canada by a substantial amount, or if the Black Ferns don't pick up a bonus point against Scotland and England does against South Africa.

Ruling those outlying outcomes out though, if results go to expectation England and Canada will take the second and third seeds as pool-toppers on the other side of the knockout bracket while France will be the fourth seed as the best second-placed team from Pool C.

In that scenario, and continuing the trend of expected results, the Black Ferns would then likely face France in the semifinals while England and Canada square off in the other match.

A win there for any team books you a spot on rugby's biggest stage.

And in case there were any concerns over how knockout games that are tied up after 80 minutes were decided, it's a lot less complex.

In the scenario of a draw during the knockout stage, teams will then play two 10-minute halves to try and break the deadlock.

If the extra 20 minutes can't separate the teams, a third 10-minute block will be played under "Sudden Death" rules; aka - next to score any points wins.

If somehow no team scores during the Sudden Death phase, a goal-kicking competition will then be used to find the winner.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

QF1: New Zealand vs Australia

QF2: Canada vs USA

QF3: England vs Wales

QF4: France vs Italy

SF1: Winner of QF1 vs Winner of QF4

SF2: Winner of QF2 vs Winner of QF3

F: Winner of SF1 vs Winner of SF2