Rugby World Cup Betting Preview, Sunday 17 September
October 8, 2025
Rugby World Cup Betting Preview, Sunday 17 September
September 15, 2023
RUGBY WORLD CUP BLOGS

We take a look at 2 of the Rugby World Cup fixtures taking place on Sunday and suggest a bet in each game.

Let’s start with a quick look at the latest Outright Betting where South Africa are trading at 28/10 favourites to win the tournament with France 3/1 and the All Blacks 4/1.

Click here for the Outright Betting on all of the Long-Term Markets

In this preview we are going to have a look at 2 of the matches taking place on Sunday and the South Africa v Romania match has its own preview – click here to read it.

 

AUSTRALIA V FIJI – Click here to bet

Australia opened their Rugby World campaign with a 20 point win over Georgia last weekend.  The Australians had started -21.5 with the bookmakers and they looked impressive early, but failed to really kick on and put the Georgians away.

In warm-up games for the Rugby World Cup Australia had lost by 24 points to France and 3 points to New Zealand both games on the road and they came bottom of the Rugby Championship losing all 3 of their matches.

Fiji were involved in a game in the opening weekend when they went down 26-32 to Wales.  There was plenty of drama with Fiji coming back strongly and having two tries disallowed and in the dying seconds a Fiji knock-on prevented what had looked like a match winning try.

In their warm-up games Fiji had beaten England by 8 points at Twickenham and lost by 70 points to France in France.

Head to Head

These sides last met in the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan with Australia winning 39-21.

HANDICAP:  Australia -6.5

 

Fiji need to turn the Wallabies over to stay in contention and if they keep focused for the whole 80 minutes they will be a handful. However our preference is for the Wallabies to have the better of the first half and we take them to lead going into the half time break

Suggested Bet: 1st Half – Winning Margin, Australia by 1-7 points at 21/10

 

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ENGLAND V JAPAN – Click here to bet

It may not have been the most flashy, but England put in perhaps the performance of the weekend in Round 1 when they beat Argentina 27-10 despite going down to an early red card.  George Ford, the English fly-half put on a master class which included 3 dropped goals.

England’s preparations for the Rugby World Cup hadn’t gone well and they had lost to Fiji at home and were well beaten by Ireland in Dublin.

Japan overcame some early Chili resistance to beat them 42-12 which given they started 25 point favourites was enough to also beat the spread.

In their warm-up games they lost by 21 points in Italy and they lost to Fiji and Samoa, but beat Tonga in the Pacific Nations Cup.

Head to Head

England and Japan last met in the Autumn Nations Series in November 2022 with England winning 22-13.  They also met in 2018 with England winning 35-15 and in the 1987 World Cup England won 60-7.

HANDICAP:  England -22.5

Kudos to England for last week’s crucial win over Argentina. They should go in again here and with their confidence restored we take them to cover the handicap

Suggested Bet: Handicap, England -22.5 points at 9/10

 

 

 

Note: All prices correct at the time of writing but are subject to change

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