World Rugby Rankings after 6n

1 NEW ZEALAND  93.99
2 IRELAND  89.11
3 ENGLAND  86.23
4 AUSTRALIA  85.49
5 SCOTLAND  83.83
6 SOUTH AFRICA 83.81
7 WALES          83.41
8 FRANCE          79.10
9 ARGENTINA 78.22
10 FIJI         77.93

Rankings sometimes get a bit of stick, but again I think they're quite fair.

Suggests that Ireland in Australia and England in South Africa (with +3 for home advantage) should be very close series. Wales vs South Africa in the States should be a close thing, while Wales should beat Argentina away. Scotland should improve their away form with wins over Canada, USA and Argentina, while France shouldn't bother going to NZ.

For completeness, Italy play 2 tests in Japan, Georgia play Japan, Fiji and Tonga (all away) and Romania play Fiji away - although only Fiji are in the top 10.

Where are England going this summer?  SA?  I thought I heard they were going to Americas?

Oh I just must have picked that up wrong somewhere down the line

ah it's Wales.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, it's Wales I was reading about

France will give NZ a game in at least one of the contests.  That's a miserable side for trying to score tries of - if they get even harder there then it's almost like Ireland of a few years ago.  Frustrating side to break down.  They'll test NZ's patience in at least one game I think.

ps...hold on a sec. Depending on dates, IF France pulled off an away win against NZ............ Ireland might be potentially Number 1 in the world for a few hours or a day?????


What a joke to look forward to if that happened! You'd have to be very quick with the 'Print Screen' button on that World Rugby Rankings page for fear of missing the moment!

SecretFly wrote:France will give NZ a game in at least one of the contests.  That's a miserable side for trying to score tries of - if they get even harder there then it's almost like Ireland of a few years ago.  Frustrating side to break down.  They'll test NZ's patience in at least one game I think.

ps...hold on a sec.  Depending on dates, IF France pulled off an away win against NZ............ Ireland might be potentially Number 1 in the world for a few hours or a day?????


What a joke to look forward to if that happened!  You'd have to be very quick with the 'Print Screen' button on that World Rugby Rankings page for fear of missing the moment!

Ireland will get slightly under 1 point if they beat Australia in T1, then slightly less again for winning T2 and T3, were they to win the tests.

NZ will get no points for beating France, but lose 2 points if they lose to France. If NZ lost the first 2 tests, they'd then get point again for winning the third, but not as many as they lost.

Assuming NZ lose any one test, they'd therefore be on 91.99.

If Ireland win the series 3-0 with 3 tight games, then they'd be on 91.40. They'd need possibly 2x 16+ wins to overhaul the All Blacks without playing them.

Assuming NZ and Ireland were to both take 3-0 wins (no 16+ pointers) and then play each other in Ireland (as they do in the Autumn) - then Ireland would need to beat NZ by 16+ points to overhaul them (assuming there was no change to each set of points before the encounter - which is unlikely).

The thing with the rankings is that if you are at the top it's hard to increase your points without playing and beating other top teams. Ireland can help themselves by beating Australia away, but after every match they win, the next match would be worth less. It gets to the stage where you cannot get much higher without beating the top team.

I don't think we picked up many points at all in the first 4 weeks of the 2017 Six Nations, despite getting 4 wins in Championship rugby. Checking the history, we went from 90.46 in January to 91.02 in March, and I think that was all for beating Wales away. At that stage if we had played NZ (home or away) for the next game, we would have needed a 16+ point win to take number 1. As it was, we obviously played Ireland and lost away, dropping quite severely to 89.53. If we had won, it would have only been a modest rise to 91.54.

A glorious sight. About time we surpassed those Springbok jessies. 

Interesting commentary about England on the WR website

In finishing fifth in the Six Nations table, their worst performance in just over two decades, England have slipped from second to third in the rankings and have lost 4.64 points since the competition began on February 3.

George Carlin wrote:A glorious sight. About time we surpassed those Springbok jessies. 

Interesting commentary about England on the WR website

In finishing fifth in the Six Nations table, their worst performance in just over two decades, England have slipped from second to third in the rankings and have lost 4.64 points since the competition began on February 3.

England took 0 points from Italy or Wales, due to the ranking difference. England were over 13 points higher than Italy and (just) over 7 points higher than Wales, so when you adjust for home advantage in each game, we were over 10 points higher than both opponents. Wins were expected.

Scotland and France where then ranked much lower, even with home advantage. Ireland were ranked higher than us when we played them, but when adjusted for home advantage when calculating the points exchange, we had a higher ranking, therefore lost more points again.

We lost 1.49 against Scotland, 1.88 against France and 1.27 against Ireland. These are all big, big drops in rankings terms. To put it into perspective, if England beat South Africa in the first test, they'll only gain 1 point back, and then less for any subsequent wins.

If England won 3-0 with each victory on 16+ points - unlikely as that is, then we'd still only gain back 3.48 in the rankings.