Ireland finished with a better record than England and 2 others in the quarter finals and are out lol what a joke of a system.
RL suffers hugely from a chasm in terms of ability between the top teams and the bottom. The RL authorities have scratched around over previous World Cups to try to find a formula that makes for a workable combination of including as many teams as possible, reducing the incidences of real twattings, and ensuring that the bigger teams are not knocked out early at the expense of a minnow.
So they created a two-tier group stage. The top-tier has 3 out of 4 teams in each of the 2 groups qualifying for the QF's; the lower tier provides just one - the top-finishing - team from each of the 2 groups.
I think it's the closest they've come to solving the problem
In the wider sense, it's been a fairly decent world cup so far - some really good games amongst the inevitable poorer ones (the Tonga-NZ match was fantastic)
PNG are going to give England a hell of a game and the atmosphere should be superb. Fiji are also going to be tough for NZ to beat. Aus should stroll past Samoa (but I hope there's a lot of Samoan physicality!), whilst Tonga should beat Lebanon/AusC but I don't think it'll be a walkover.
So out of 4 QF games, there's likely to be 3 keenly-contested games, with one a more comfortable win. I think that's progress. Even if Australia will win it again.