The Americas Pacific Challenge (APC) is a

rugby union Rugby union football, commonly known simply as rugby union in English-speaking countries and rugby 15/XV in non-English-speaking world, Anglophone Europe, or often just rugby, is a Contact sport#Terminology, close-contact team sport that orig ...

tournament funded by

World Rugby World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international competit ...

that serves as a development competition for Americas and Pacific island nations. It provides a way to prepare players for participation with their senior national men's teams during international tests and in the

Rugby World Cup qualification Rugby World Cup qualification is a process that determines which nations will compete at the Rugby World Cup, a men's rugby union competition. Unlike previous tournaments (where eight teams, the quarter-finalists from the preceding World Cup, qu ...

cycle. The competition has been hosted by the

Uruguayan Rugby Union The Uruguayan Rugby Union () is the governing body for rugby union in Uruguay. Foundation and affiliation It was founded in 1951 and became affiliated to the International Rugby Board World Rugby is the governing body for the sport of rug ...

since 2016, with all games played in

Montevideo Montevideo (, ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2023 census, the city proper has a population of 1,302,954 (about 37.2% of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

. Prior to its creation, two teams from the Americas had played in the Pacific Challenge, hosted by Fiji in 2015. This was reversed in 2016 with two Pacific Island teams joining the inaugural APC which effectively replaced the previous format of the

Americas Rugby Championship The Americas Rugby Championship, often informally called the Americas' Six Nations, was an annual international rugby tournament between six North and South American nations: Argentina national rugby union team, Argentina, Brazil national rugby u ...

History

The APC was first contested in October 2016 by the national 'A' teams of Argentina, Canada, Fiji, Samoa, Uruguay and United States. Tonga took the place of the Fijian team for the 2017 competition, and retained that place in 2018. The competition had a two-year hiatus which encompassed the 2019 Rugby World Cup and a 2020 season disrupted by impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Teams from Brazil, Chile and Paraguay took part for the first time in the 2021 Challenge, but the Pacific Islands did not participate due to difficulties with COVID-19 travel logistics.

Format

The Americas Pacific Challenge uses a split pool format wherein the six competing teams are divided into two pools of three. Each team plays one match against each of the teams in the opposite pool. The tournament's winner is decided based upon the number of points accumulated from each match.

Participating teams

The final placings of all teams for each year are recorded in the table below as numbers (where 1 denotes first place, 2 denotes second, etc.). The host nation's placing is shown in bold. A dash (–) is recorded in the year column if a team did not compete at a tournament.

Winners

References

{{International rugby union World Rugby competitions Rugby union competitions in South America 2016 establishments in South America Recurring sporting events established in 2016 International rugby union competitions hosted by Uruguay

History

Format

Participating teams

Winners

See also

References