World Rankings - 22 October 2007 Position (last week) (4) ENGLAND 85.61 -- 3 (6) ARGENTINA 87.56?

Question

Argentina Rugby and Asosiation Amateur. 3º.

3(6) ARGENTINA 87.56

4(3) ENGLAND 85.61 jajajajajajajaja

5(5) AUSTRALIA 84.21 jajajajajajajaja

6(4) FRANCE 80.43 jajajajajajajaja

7(7) IRELAND 78.66 jajajajajajajaja

8(8) SCOTLAND 76.83 jajajajajajajaja

Answer 1

Interesting.....the only one which surprises me is England. I can only assume that their must be extra ranking points for the World cup as in the last four year there is no way England has been better than almost any other nation....but still nice to see us up there.

I am trying to think who is one and two...all blacks and who? not Wales or Italy.

Answer 2

South Africa  no 1

New Zealand no 2

The world rankings are skewered as the world cup attracts double rankings points for a win ..

Argentina's ranking is also skewered in reality .. They happened to beat the French , ranked ahead of them in the world  but because they knocked them off at the world cup twice and earned double points for that then their world rankings shot up ..

England also knocked over the Wallabies who were ranked higher on world rankings and got double points for that  which raised their percentages and lifted them higher ..

both England and Argentina played two extra world cup matches than say New Zealand and the Wallabies which allowed them to get further opportunity to gain double rankings points which in the end they did ..

Answer 3

The IRB rankings try to show the state of teams at a particular point of time. The rankings change regularly. At the moment it shows the strength of teams with recent results-history combined with long term results-history. That the All Blacks have dominated world rugby over the past few years is well known. Their RWC flop drops them down. Argentina and England show the results of a good RWC tournament. South Africa are #1 because of good results over the past few years and the past few weeks.

Answer 4

The irb ranking are an imperfect solution to an unanswerable question - who, at any one time, is the best team in the world.

Quite clearly, all that matters is who won the world cup - as the all blacks can attest, it's no good being the best team in the world for 3 1/2 years and then choking on the biggest stage of all.

What the rankings and the RWC do show quite clearly is that it is time for Argentina to be playing regular competition at the top level.