RWC: More stats and background to this years competition

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This taken from the Sunday StarTimes as a follow up on the The numbers for you to gawp at posting from a week or so ago:
The World Cup actually began 739 days ago at the Molt Illustre Conseille General, in the principality of Andorra, nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrennean mountains. Back on September 4, 2004, Andorra beat Norway 76-3 to kick off an 86-country, 191-match, 932-day qualifying process to find 12 teams to join the eight automatic qualifiers - including, of course, New Zealand. Andorra aren't among them. Portugal snaffled the last spot on March 2004.


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