Rugby World Cup: Sport on the Internet

THE RUGBY World Cup that kicks off in the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, on Friday will be covered to saturation point by traditional media. New media

will be in on the action as well.

A visit to the search engines will bring up sites where the focus is from the point of view of one or other of the 20 qualifying countries. For a more measured view, those sites with a wider angle on the event will be more objective.

The official site is slick and clean with trilingual Javascript rollovers - English, French and Welsh - on the main navigation bar. It's a large site with plenty of easily accessible content. The news coverage is good and the live-news feed is augmented with a searchable archive which should become increasingly useful as the tournament advances.

Scores will be updated in real time. The pages set-up for this look well- thought out. The team section includes news, details of forthcoming matches, links to team Websites and information on the qualifiers.

Background on the event and details of the three previous World Cups are under the Off The Field navigation button. MediaWorld leads to an archive of images, and audio and video clips.

Scrum.com has merged with RugbyToday and joined the Sportal Network. It too has a scores and results service with access to biographies and team profiles. An SMS messaging service for mobile phones will augment the online live scores and commentary.

SITE ADDRESSES: Official Rugby World Cup: http://rwc99.com/. Scrum.com: http://www.scrum.com/.