Ireland Return To Fifth Place In World Rankings
Ireland are back in fifth place in the IRB World Rankings after Saturday’s dramatic finish in Paris saw them edge out France 22-20 and claim the Six Nations title.
Joe Schmidt’s men began the Championship ranked seventh in the world, but have climbed above both France and Wales following their run of four wins in five Six Nations outings.
France drop two places to seventh this week, with Wales grabbing sixth place after their big win over Scotland in Cardiff.
No ratings points were gained or lost in Rome by victors England or Italy as the ratings gap between them going into the match was too great for an England win to have any effect.
Scotland remain 10th in the rankings, but are now less than one rating point ahead of Fiji in 11th position.
Further down the rankings, Spain just failed to break into the top 20 despite a 28-24 away win over Portugal. Portugal drop two places to 24th, below Namibia and Korea.
Georgia (16th) and Russia (19th) gained ratings points with victories over Romania and Belgium respectively, but not enough to improve their rankings positions.
The only rankings match this week is a big one – the first leg of the 2015 Rugby World Cup play-off between Uruguay (20th) and USA (18th) – to decide who goes into Pool B of the tournament in England next year.
IRB WORLD RANKINGS (as of Monday, March 17):
Last week’s positions in brackets –
1(1) New Zealand 93.81 rating points
2(2) South Africa 89.34
3(3) Australia 86.88
4(4) England 85.68
5(6) IRELAND 82.13
6(7) Wales 80.70
7(5) France 80.07
8(8) Samoa 77.34
9(9) Argentina 76.44
10(10) Scotland 75.16
11(11) Fiji 74.21
12(12) Tonga 73.21
13(13) Japan 72.06
14(14) Italy 72.05
15(15) Canada 70.75
16(16) Georgia 70.46
17(17) Romania 68.08