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Seismic world rankings change after whirlwind Rugby World Cup weekend
By Ian Cameron
South Africa are back on top of the world ranking after a whirlwind Rugby World Cup quarter-final weekend which saw both Ireland and France dumped out of the tournament.
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Ireland suffering a repeat of their RWC 2019 quarter-final loss to New Zealand means that South Africa will replace them at the summit of the World Rugby rankings following their victory over France. The Irish quarter-final curse struck again, with Andy Farrell’s men unable to claw back an early All Blacks lead.
Ireland lose the top spot for the first time in over 12 months, as their 17-game unbeaten streak was brought to a dramatic end by Ian Foster’s avenging All Blacks.
England’s narrow win over the lower-ranked Fiji in Marseille sees them climb above Scotland into fifth.
The Flying Fijians remain in 10th despite their loss to Steve Borthwick’s men, who are the only unbeaten team left in the tournament.
The fact that Argentina beat Wales and reach a second semi-final in three Rugby World Cups means that Los Pumas are now the higher-ranked of the two sides.
Double ranking points at the World Cup mean those teams left in the tournament can gain significant ground of those who have already exited, that is if they are not already in front of them on the log.
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Fair enough. The number is bigger. Let’s see how he manages it.
“With the exception of Moodie and possibly Mngomezulu, I could go through every player you’ve mentioned and find multiple English players who play the same position as them who are both better and younger.” - Me
that’s one problem.
Another problem is that very often players who break through at a young age don’t go on to develop as expected. Of the 3 in the squad already and the 6 previously mentioned several will not make it to 2027. In 2019, for example, Thomas du Toit, Warrick Gelant and Sbu Nkosi were young players in the would cup squad, but none of them made it to 2023. I know du Toit has played recently for south africa but none of those three are the type of player you’d back to perform reliably well in big world cup games.
Not sure what the problem is. Seventeen minus the three, minus the half dozen that we have talked about, means that there are about eight that need to be found. Let’s call it ten to be safe. So that’s five in 2024 and five in 2025. It’s not great, but it’s not scary.
no, if the average squad age in 2027 is 29 then there will have to be at least 17 players who are currently aged 25 or younger. Currently there are only 3 such players in the world cup squad.
Answering your point about young players. The above profile suggests that in the next couple of years Rassie will have to find 8 or 10 players that are (currently) 25 or younger. There are some in the curremty extended squad, you have named a few more, and there will be more that emerge. Honestly, I am much more concerned about losing Jacques than about whether there will be the player strength in 2027.
But the tweetie, tweet, tweet, Irish 🇮🇪, who I have zero sympathy for. Gobby they are, deserved to be knocked out.
The French though, unlucky, like that French side a lot.
Perhaps if you actually showed the rankings it would help
Amazing tournament and some breathtaking moments in every game, the ¼finals were edge of the seat games slightly blemished by some dubious refereeing decisions.
I also notice that disrespect for the officials is creeping into the game more and more
Best of Luck to the last 4.
Well that was a waste of ink ,no mention of NZ or England on their standings
It says England 5th..
Ranking is just a ranking and has little bearing on who wins when teams are close, it fluctuates and is prone to mismatching due to all teams not playing each other, as in a tournament/competition. The RWC is every 4 years so it is rare, is a multi-tiered competition and is the big prize every rugby playing nation wants. Trophies are best. Paper competitions are just that.
Rankings spoiled this years competion putting four top teams in 2 groups instead of ranking so they would meet if winners in semi finals ??
Rankings schmankings.
It’s all about the silverware. Anything else is fool’s gold.
Ratings means piss. Ask Ireland
Yep. Or NZ.
Some unbelievable rugby played over the weekend. Sad the Ireland got knocked out. It is what it is. Good luck to the last four
It matters not one jot. Like football it will come down to TV audience figures and will be heavily biased in favour of a Murdoch subscriber base…..watch this space!
The model has flaws in that the lack of yearly games against each opponent every year mean that end of year tours are ranked the same as Championship winning matches.
Only World Cup competition is rated double.
It has a bias towards a four yearly Knock Out comp which shouldn’t be weighted more highly than a round robin comp yearly.
Weighting the round robin comps against each other based upon previous World Cup positions would be more accurate.
https://www.world.rugby/tournaments/rankings/explanation.
You don’t bias the rating of the tennis #1 based on an Olympic Gold medal it’s based on yearly competition.
The lack of regular comps for tier two nations with promotion/relegation artificially bias’ the ranking system also.
Maybe Cap Gemini’s model is faulty.
The bogus three point deviation for home wins disproportionality bias’ the outcome and doesn’t account in weighting for the inherent weakness of the Tier Two Heineken Cup and Six Nations competitions.
🤪
Weighting a four yearly Knock Out competition more highly than yearly round robin competition is nuts. It’s like rating the Olympics Tennis higher than the ATP Grand slam tour.
Rating end of year tour games the same as round robin comp matches doesn’t make sense. If you play and win all your games away from home against higher ranked opposition you can achieve higher ranking than if you beat everyone with 50% of your games at home.
Weighting needs to be applied for the lower strength of the Six Nations unions and their low percentage of World Cup wins. 10% is looking like an accurate measure.
International rankings were invented to give the media something else to talk about. And that’s about it.
Now if World Rugby could finally start funding these “2nd tier” nations like Fiji and Samoa who have less than 10% of Englands player numbers and probably less than 5% of its budget … almost no international tests against top tier nations in between world cups … and still can compete with them, miraculously.
France for 2027 W/C they have a very young team average age 26.
And their junior teams are frightening. They dominated the u/19 WC final. It’s looking quite ominous
Hawuema!
That’s a nice surprise.
The farcical rankings by the World Rugby Board on the LAST wc rankings have proved to be ridiculous. France faced SA, two top tier teams in the QUARTER FINALS???? Then you have a very weak pool that leads to a lack luster & boring England into the SEMIs. It’s a cruel joke!
England is there, Ireland is home. Well done England You made better progress than Ireland who these experts say DESERVE a final. They deserve a Guinness watching Virgin Sport at Home. 😂
You’re confusing the rankings with the draw.
The rankings are updated after every international match, with winners (and lower ranked teams that draw) taking points off their opponents based on the difference in rankings going in to the match and the size of the win. It’s a pretty good indicator of where teams are relative to each other at any point in time - but one of the joys of rugby is that it allows for upsets.
The draw has historically been made 3 years or so out from the RWC to allow the organiser to plan venues and match scheduling based on the likely attendance and tv viewership, and then to allow fans time to book tickets, transport and hotels.
Arguably that’s too far out and World Rugby has committed to look at whether future draws can be done closer to the event, but I think they will struggle to do it much less than 2 years before because of the need to allow time for ticketing and booking.
In any case, the top seeds in the draw are the previous tournament’s semi-finalists - which this time were England, Wales, SA and NZ. So regardless of when the draw was made, France and Ireland would each have had a 50% chance of ending up in a pool with NZ or SA.
Rankings are a sort of nice thing to track progress, over time. But unless it’s like a record-breaking run at no. 1 do they actually matter? No-one remembers them ultimately.
I don’t care who was ranked 1, 2 or 3 going into a World Cup. I don’t remember who was no. 1 when South Africa won it in ‘95. I remember the historic moment and them winning the World Cup post-apartheid and Mandela in a Boks jersey.
Ditto Wilkinson’s last minute drop-goal in ‘03. Those are the real memories, not some relatively arbitrary thing.
You could probably take a stab at it when New Zealand has been Number 1 80% of the time since they have started world rankings
Or if Argentina become the first-ever South American team to do it and so on.
Literally no-one will remember England being ranked 8th or whatever it was, if they somehow pull off a miracle win, will they?
Talking about the “Irish QF curse” is a cute shorthand, but it's a cop out.
More accurately, Ireland have not yet developed the ability to peak at the RWC, to avoid disclosing all of their weapons too early, and to raise their game when it really matters.
Its not about luck, or referees, or the myths of black jerseys. It’s about learning. Ireland have done fantastically in recent years, have deservedly held the #1 ranking, and have had an impressive unbeaten run. But successfully targeting the RWC requires further abilities beyond those that Ireland have so ably demonstrated.
Good luck to Ireland for 2027. Suggestion: Please drop the Curse language, and instead plan backwards from the goal.
Ireland not is not making excuses about the cures other nations are
I think its not so much to do with “abilities” as it does with circumstance. Rassie was clearly one of the best coaches in world rugby after 2019, so in the past 3 years he’s had a lot of goodwill from his players, his union, and the public, so he has been able to lose games without his position ever being under threat. Farrell and much of his team were in a more precarious position prior to 2022. They will have felt the need to really prove themselves, at least until the NZ tour, before allowing themselves to look to the world cup. Add to that the fact that Farrell and Galthie will both coach until 2027, most likely, whereas Foster and Nienaber are both moving on. The former two are involved in long term projects, whereas the latter may find their entire legacies as coaches is determined this month. This is also true of many south african players. I’ve criticised Rassie and Jacques a lot in the past for picking players who are past their peak, but it might actually be giving them a psychological edge now, as the bulk of their team realise this is their last chance to win a world cup.
I don't know - they pretty much looked at close to peak form against the Books in the World Cup a few weeks ago. A bit confused as to how SA have overtaken Ireland having lost to them in this tournament. In fact, given that each of the top four has won one and lost one against each other at this tournament, wouldn't it suggest that there's basically nothing between them?
The Northern power game myth turned out to be as full of hype as a Tory levelling up pledge. Cancelled faster than HS2
NZ at number 2 conspicuous by absence in article (unless I’m misreading). Who really cares tbf (NH teams is the proper answer lol)?
The only rankings that matter in a World Cup year are those released in the days after the final.
you would be right, although these are typically skewed by the double weighting applied to the 3rd/4th place play-off!
Rankings mean nothing in the world cup…. So what number 1 or number 2….. The Previous 1 and 2 are both watching on telly…. Forget rankings when the WC is being played….