New World Rankins table.

New world Men's Rankings
Updated: 16 November, 2020
2020

NOVEMBER

TUESDAY 17TH
FULL RANKINGS
POSITION TEAMS POINTS
1
(1)
SOUTH AFRICA 94.20
2
(3)
ENGLAND 88.42
3
(2)
NEW ZEALAND 88.17
4
(4)
FRANCE 84.59
5
(5)
IRELAND 84.57
6
(6)
AUSTRALIA 83.86
7
(7)
SCOTLAND 82.28
8
(10)
ARGENTINA 80.31
9
(8)
WALES 79.75
10
(9)
JAPAN 79.

Wales now in third tier rugby since Pivac took over. How will Wales get out of this slump that they are in?
Discuss.

Big fan of Paul Rankin's potato farls. Lovely when toasted with a dash of butter.

They were ranked lower than this in 2012. That slump ended with them beating England 30-3 to win the grand slam in 2013.

As ever rankings arent definitive. And coaches need time to bed in like most players.

Gooseberry wrote:They were ranked lower than this in 2012. That slump ended with them beating England 30-3 to win the grand slam in 2013.

They won the 6Ns title in 2013, but not a Grand Slam, having lost to Ireland in round 1.

No 7&1/2 wrote:As ever rankings arent definitive. And coaches need time to bed in like most players.

They’re also irrelevant to the RWC seeds, so whilst it probably brings joy to a few people, Wales being tier three doesn’t really matter a jot.

In the words of Who’s line is it anyway.

“It is only points, but the points don’t matter”

Old Man wrote:In the words of Who’s line is it anyway.

“It is only points, but the points don’t matter”

Course when England then SAS had won the world cup all the Kiwi trolls on here spent the 8 years saying the rankings meant more than the world cup.

I don’t need rankings to tell me how we stack up against other teams.

Dear me. madge has months off the forum, comes back to try and stick the boot in to Wales, and sill can't spell rankings. Like HERSH, gets a free pass do it.

Old Man wrote:I don’t need rankings to tell me how we stack up against other teams.

Well you don't stack up against anyone if you refuse to play.

Gooseberry wrote:

Old Man wrote:I don’t need rankings to tell me how we stack up against other teams.

Well you don't stack up against anyone if you refuse to play.

We didn’t refuse to play.

As we won’t refuse to play next year.

Our situation is a bit more complex than just rocking up. But then if your attitude is as it is there is no use explaining it to you, is there?

mikey_dragon wrote:Dear me. madge has months off the forum, comes back to try and stick the boot in to Wales, and sill can't spell rankings. Like HERSH, gets a free pass do it.

But can he spell 'still'?
Still, at least Wales are in the Top 9 Elite

Well egg on my face then. Just goes to show what we've all been saying really. We went from being ranked No.1 - which shows a great degree of consistency, to this where we just lose all our games. Luckily the RWC seeding's have already taken place, you wouldn't fancy our chances at the moment anyway.

Thankfully Wales are in the top tier for the next RWC which was fine reward for an excellent period prior to and including the World Cup last year. Punishing them as they rebuild following 12 years of Gatland would be wrong given the lockdown period. In fact, I think it's harsh to have rankings made 12 months after a RWC anyway - the teams that play well usually have a larger decline than those that don't. The rankings are meaningless until it comes to the RWC draw, so who cares? They're meaningless for the next 4 years. No one seriously thought Wales were the best team in the world last summer just as they're not the 9th best team in the world now, they're clearly still a much better rugby nation and team than Scotland on balance, for instance.

rugby racing and beer wrote:Thankfully Wales are in the top tier for the next RWC which was fine reward for an excellent period prior to and including the World Cup last year. Punishing them as they rebuild following 12 years of Gatland would be wrong given the lockdown period. In fact, I think it's harsh to have rankings made 12 months after a RWC anyway - the teams that play well usually have a larger decline than those that don't. The rankings are meaningless until it comes to the RWC draw, so who cares? They're meaningless for the next 4 years. No one seriously thought Wales were the best team in the world last summer just as they're not the 9th best team in the world now, they're clearly still a much better rugby nation and team than Scotland on balance, for instance.

They were obviously much better than us 2 weeks ago!

The point of this thread about Wales now being in the number 9 slot of the world "Rankings"
Thank you for putting right on my spelling guy's is that i cannot remember Wales being so low in the Rankings.

Like wise with New Zealand being in fourth right. Is this a first time NZ being 4th place?
I will let you experts tell me.

Great question. Looking it up and this came up www.google.co.uk

majesticimperialman wrote:The point of this thread about Wales now being in the number 9 slot of the world "Rankings"
Thank you for putting right on my spelling guy's is that i cannot remember Wales being so low in the Rankings.

Like wise with New Zealand being in fourth right. Is this a first time NZ being 4th place?
I will let you experts tell me.

Aren’t NZ third?

Old Man wrote:

majesticimperialman wrote:The point of this thread about Wales now being in the number 9 slot of the world "Rankings"
Thank you for putting right on my spelling guy's is that i cannot remember Wales being so low in the Rankings.

Like wise with New Zealand being in fourth right. Is this a first time NZ being 4th place?
I will let you experts tell me.

Aren’t NZ third?

Because of the loss to Argentina they are now 4th.

Wah wah wah.

NeilyBroon wrote:

rugby racing and beer wrote:Thankfully Wales are in the top tier for the next RWC which was fine reward for an excellent period prior to and including the World Cup last year. Punishing them as they rebuild following 12 years of Gatland would be wrong given the lockdown period. In fact, I think it's harsh to have rankings made 12 months after a RWC anyway - the teams that play well usually have a larger decline than those that don't. The rankings are meaningless until it comes to the RWC draw, so who cares? They're meaningless for the next 4 years. No one seriously thought Wales were the best team in the world last summer just as they're not the 9th best team in the world now, they're clearly still a much better rugby nation and team than Scotland on balance, for instance.

They were obviously much better than us 2 weeks ago!

Much better? Did you watch a different game?

majesticimperialman wrote:

Old Man wrote:

majesticimperialman wrote:The point of this thread about Wales now being in the number 9 slot of the world "Rankings"
Thank you for putting right on my spelling guy's is that i cannot remember Wales being so low in the Rankings.

Like wise with New Zealand being in fourth right. Is this a first time NZ being 4th place?
I will let you experts tell me.

Aren’t NZ third?

Because of the loss to Argentina they are now 4th.

Nope, they are third and 4 points clear of France who are indeed fourth.

1
(1)
SOUTH AFRICA
94.20
2
(3)
ENGLAND
88.42
3
(2)
NEW ZEALAND
88.17
4
(4)
FRANCE
84.59
5
(5)
IRELAND
84.57
6
(6)
AUSTRALIA
83.86
7
(7)
SCOTLAND
82.28
8
(10)
ARGENTINA
80.31
9
(8)
WALES
79.75
10
(9)
JAPAN
79.29

rugby racing and beer wrote:

NeilyBroon wrote:

rugby racing and beer wrote:Thankfully Wales are in the top tier for the next RWC which was fine reward for an excellent period prior to and including the World Cup last year. Punishing them as they rebuild following 12 years of Gatland would be wrong given the lockdown period. In fact, I think it's harsh to have rankings made 12 months after a RWC anyway - the teams that play well usually have a larger decline than those that don't. The rankings are meaningless until it comes to the RWC draw, so who cares? They're meaningless for the next 4 years. No one seriously thought Wales were the best team in the world last summer just as they're not the 9th best team in the world now, they're clearly still a much better rugby nation and team than Scotland on balance, for instance.

They were obviously much better than us 2 weeks ago!

Much better? Did you watch a different game?

Meanwhile in a thread that isnt started to troll Wales

rugby racing and beer wrote:Wales play a Georgia team they dispatched with ease 12 months ago yet the situation is very different.7 losses in a row. JD2 injured. Defence coached sacked.

Wales' biggest weakness appears to be up front in the pack and given Georgia will fight and wrestle all day long, this could be Georgia's best chance to beat an established tier 1 team like Wales in a long, long time.

Georgia really must fancy their chances against this Welsh team. I can see it being one for the purists as a nervous, ill disciplined, and ragged Welsh team is likely to struggle up against a big, bruising pack with a solid set piece. This might be a game that is played around the halfway line and goes from set piece to set piece, mistake to mistake. Neither team seems to have much in the way of a cutting edge and both have no hope of progressing to the final rounds of this 'tournament'.
.

Just for clarity on the world cup seedings@

Pot 1 : SA, NZ, ENG , WAL
Pot 2 : IRE AUS FRA JAP
Pot 3: SCO, ARG, FIJ, ITA

Its of course impossible to predict with certainty which teams will peak and dip when it rolls around...but the draw could give a group of SA, FRA, and ARG (currently 1 , 5 ,7 in the rankings with two teams quite capable of pushing higher) and a pool of WAL. JAP, ITA ( currently 9, 10 , 13), and realistically only Wales of those has a decent chance to climb to be a top 6 team.

The rankings have been screwed a bit by lack of tests this summer and the autumn fixtures not being included, but its understandable why WR had to do it this way. 2015 of course we ended up with the 2,3,4 ranked sides at the time in the same pool so this can always be a thing if they keep doing the draw 3 years early.

You don't understand 'form', Goose?

rugby racing and beer wrote:You don't understand 'form', Goose?

At risk of hijacking this further ... you were talking about a game 2 weeks ago in the discussion re: Scotland, and whether the current rankings are reasonable or not.

And don't make me go through all your posts from the past weeks where you were trashing the entire set up of welsh rugby and the long term structural problems with the regions leading to a lack of quality players coming through.

I just find it amusing how the welsh fans will absolutely trash their team and Pivac in discussions between themselves, but the minute anyone from England criticizes them (to be fair in the context of this specific thread it was a full on troll) or someone from Scotland dares to suggest their team might be better then suddenly its just a temporary blip and they were unlucky to loose games etc.

You may note also that in the next post I do agree that Wales are one of the teams that have the potential to climb back into the top 6, and drew attention to what happened last time they dropped this low in an earlier post on this thread. It looks like a hard road but whilst I disagree that Wales are a "much better team at the moment" than Scotland (at the moment? form? and even then, I cant see this group of players suddenly becoming the sort of team thats going to steamroll scotland without a radical overhaul) I do agree that Wales as a country/union has much more potential for the long term than Scotland.

Goosebury, I have edited your post. That paragraph really did not lend anything to the discussion.

This is not a dig at Wales, but I've never understood why the seedings are done so early in the cycle for the RWC. It seems like its primarily rewarding performance from the last 4 year cycle, rather than being a true reflection of where teams are in the lead up to the tournament. If its mainly due to logistics of team bases etc that's a different question, but purely from the rugby side of things it seems odd

Seeding isn't something I 100% agree with, but I do see the value in it from the organisers point of view that they want to keep the top team match ups until the latter stages where possible. Its an area where I think football generally has it right, with the pots for the draw being selected 6 months or so before the tournament.

Appreciate that NH teams may try a big of skullduggery and avoid playing the bigger SH teams or vice versa for an autumn to try and keep some more ranking points, but if that is considered to be an issue then why not do it as the top two from the 6N in RWC year and the top 2 from the Rugby Championship of the summer before? Its not perfect but seems a lot fairer reflection of status leading into the tournament

BamBam wrote:I've never understood why the seedings are done so early in the cycle for the RWC.

Marketing.

The argument put forward by the tournament organisers (and they have looked at moving it later at least a couple of times) is that they need as long as possible to sell the matches.

That explains that! Just googled the above and found a throwaway line at the bottom of this BBC article https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/54393006

"The RWC board has recommended the draw for future tournaments should take place no earlier than one year before the event to ensure the pools better reflect performance at the time."

Maybe it is likely to change going forward

It seems like it's for the best I didn't read Goose's original comment. I do wish people would play the ball and not the man on this forum. It's tiring for everyone.

I think it's right that the draw was changed. It makes sense to either make it based on previous RWC finishes - like it currently is for tier 2 finishing third or highest place, for instance - or have it a year before as it appears it will become.

Having it a year or two post-RWC is a situation that suits no one. Teams that do well at the RWC often end up having to completely rebuild and suffer negative results in the immediate aftermath as well as longer term - see NZ post-2015 or that in 2017. Not to mention how Wales have twice ended up suffering due to doing well in the RWC itself - by losing the 3rd place play off and suffering back to back 'double point' losses. The team that loses the bronze final would end up in a better position if they'd lost the QF in terms of ranking points, that's not right.

I'm not sure there's a perfect soltion but, long term, I'd like everyone to have to qualify, not just tier 2. Not sure how you'd do it but it would have to reflect tougher opponents for tier 1/6Ns teams etc. Having automatic qualification won't make much sense as the game expands and smaller nations like the USA get better.

I don’t think it matters when the draw is done, it won’t suit some teams always. Can’t keep everyone happy.

I would prefer it to be drawn a year out from the RWC. But that is just my preference.

I much more prefer the Fifa rankings where the losing team doesn't have to lose points.

The only reason we are constantly on about replacing italy with Georgia is often based on the rankings. Rankings are based on winning rather than quality. As we will see after this tournament Georgia are poor compared to italy. Two games and no score.