Rugby World Cup Draw Live

The draw for the 2011 Rugby World Cup takes place in London today at 3 p.m. Ireland are in the second band or countries. You can follow the draw live on the IRB website.

Ireland coach Declan Kidney and captain Brian O’Driscoll are in London today for the pool draw for th 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Ireland are ranked 8th in the world and are in the second band of countries for the draw. The final positons were determined following the games between England and New Zealand and Wales and Australia at the weekend.

For the first time the IRB World Rankings will be used to seed the 12 pre-qualified teams from RWC 2007 into bands for the draw, which takes place in London at 15:00 on Monday 1 December. As in RWC 2007, there will be four pools of five teams in RWC 2011.

The teams in the top three bands are as follows:

Band 1: New Zealand, South Africa, Australia, Argentina

Band 2: Wales, England, France, Ireland

Band 3: Scotland, Fiji, Italy, Tonga

The final two positions in each pool will be allocated to the eight qualifying places still available for RWC 2011. The banding of these eight teams is as follows:

Band 4: Americas 1, Europe 1, Europe 2, Oceania 1
Band 5: Africa 1, Americas 2, Asia 1, Play Off place

The teams in each band will be drawn randomly into one of the four pools.

The Draw will be streamed live from 15:00 UK time on Monday 1 December on www.rugbyworldcup.com