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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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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
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 schmankings.
It’s all about the silverware. Anything else is fool’s gold.
Ratings means piss. Ask Ireland
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.