World Rugby rankings: How the Six Nations impacted the ratings while Georgia fail to climb despite triple-digit victory

Jared Wright
Dan Sheehan and the current World Rugby Rankings.

Dan Sheehan and the current World Rugby Rankings.

The opening round of the 2025 Six Nations and Rugby Europe Championship has little impact on the official World Rugby rankings.

England missed the opportunity to surpass Scotland in the rankings after blowing a 10-5 half-time lead in their 27-22 defeat to Ireland at the Aviva Stadium in Dublin.

Top 20

While Scotland beat Italy in the earlier kick-off on Saturday, Steve Borthwick’s side still had the opportunity to surpass the auld enemy by moving up to sixth in the rankings.

A victory of any kind would have seen the Red Rose jump ahead of the Scots while a win of more than 15 points would have seen Ireland surrender second place. In the end, there was no change in the ranking points for Ireland or England.

Scotland did manage to increase their rating points by 0.23 with Italy losing the same amount which did not impact their 10th place ranking.

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France did not improve on their 88.51 rating with their emphatic 43-0 victory over Wales as Warren Gatland’s rating points remained the same as well due to the difference between the two sides before advantage was weighted in.

There was no change in the rankings following the weekend’s Rugby Europe Championship either.

This is despite the fact that Georgia ran in 16 tries to thrash Switzerland 110-0 to kick off their title defence in style.

Romania defeated Germany 48-10 which also didn’t see them rise in the rankings while the same is true for Portugal who beat Belgium 40-30.

Os Lobos and Spain both took a step closer to Rugby World Cup qualification with their victories, the Spaniards beating the Netherlands 53-24.

Lower down in the World Rugby rankings, only Andorra (62+2), Kazakhstan (63+1), Chinese Taipei (64+1) and Jamaica (+1) improved their ranking place with Israel (65-3), St Vincent and the Grenadines (84-1) and Serbia (85-1) falling.

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Current World Rugby rankings (As of 03/02/2024)

1 South Africa 92.78
2 Ireland 90.78
3 New Zealand 90.36
4 France 88.51
5 Argentina 84.97
6 Scotland 83.57
7 England 82.31
8 Australia 81.52
9 Fiji 80.07
10 Italy 78.41
11 Wales 74.01
12 Georgia 73.85
13 Japan 72.95
14 Samoa 72.68
15 USA 70.02
16 Portugal 68.82
17 Uruguay 67.06
18 Spain 65.98
19 Tonga 65.46
20 Romania 63.01

READ MORE: Stuart Barnes calls on Maro Itoje to lead a ‘player revolution’ against Steve Borthwick to save England’s ‘team of losers’