Argentina: Things are looking up
Argentina's biggest ever victory over France at the Velez Sarsfield Stadium has moved them one place above Wales to eighth in the IRB World Rankings.
Felipe Contepomi scored 31 points as the hosts put their two defeats versus Scotland behind them and beat third-ranked France 41-13 to gain 2.16 rating points.
France's defeat and Australia's 22-15 victory over Ireland at the Suncorp Stadium meant the two sides swapped places for the second successive week, with Australia returning to third having gained .58 rating points.
New Zealand and South Africa remained first and second with 29-10 and 55-11 victories over Wales and Italy respectively.
Wales' defeat means they drop to ninth place, their lowest position since February 2008, whilst Italy remain 11th.
The only other matches affecting the IRB World Rankings this week were the final two matches at the ANZ Pacific Nations Cup matches in Apia.
Samoa won their third and final match of the tournament against Fiji in a dramatic finale at Apia Park to claim their first PNC title and climb one place to 12th.
By defeating Fiji, ranked three places above them in 10th, Samoa gained 1.85 rating points and reclaimed the 12th spot they had lost after last week's defeat to Japan, despite Japan's victory over Tonga in the penultimate PNC match.
Japan scored a dramatic last minute penalty try against 16th placed Tonga and gained .57 rating points, but still dropped to 13th because Samoa gained more points. Tonga remain 16th, but sit just .68 rating points above 17th placed Georgia.
IRB Rankings (last week's positions in brackets)
1(1) New Zealand 91.68
2(2) South Africa 89.46
3(4) Australia 84.41
4(3) France 82.75
5(5) Ireland 82.03
6(6) England 81.82
7(7) Scotland 79.81
8(9) Argentina 79.70
9(8) Wales 78.58
10(10) Fiji 74.39
11(11) Italy 72.97
12(13) Samoa 72.74
13(12) Japan 72.49
14(14) Canada 69.43
15(15) USA 67.86
16(16) Tonga 67.06
17(17) Georgia 66.38
18(18) Russia 65.80
19(19) Romania 65.10
20(20) Namibia 62.69
Comments
bokbokbok says...
@Number 8. Three in a row. Nz won the previous years tri nations with a 2-1 series victory over the boks. The boks have only won 7 of their last 15 matches against NZ. Can't wait for this year.
Posted 20:02 30th June 2010
curates_egg says...
@bluelion it deliberately isn't and should not be overly responsive to 'current form'. Cumulative point aggregations help avoid knee jerk ratings based on one-off result aberrations, which can be caused by various factors that should not be taken into account in rankings (e.g. injury/illness crises).
All that said, it is great to see Scotland putting some results together. I hope they can carry the form on next year and that Andy Robinson can lift them out of their long slump period. If this recent form is not just an aberration, then they should have a good chance of coming out of their RWC group, which is a tough group.
Posted 08:59 30th June 2010
JSMG says...
Firstly in the case of Ireland, the Baa-Baas match and Maori matches weren't international Test matches. Also, Ireland played a second string and, secondly, Ireland's two most recent TEST match defeats were to the number one & number three ranked teams who are above them, so don't be too quick to moan about the system.
Posted 20:49 29th June 2010