IRB World Rankings

Well, following the Six Nations here is how the ladder has settled down until the Winter round. It will make pretty good reading for some and tears for others!
Since the World Cup the once impressive England have now slipped to a underachieving sixth behind one of their great rivals in Ireland. If only for Scotland's horrible 2005 the ladder would have been in 6N finishing order for those countries. The big improver so far for the year has been Scotland with a great jump rising from tenth at the start of the year.
As Australia had such a dramatic fall, so to with a successful Tri Nations campaign we can rapidly rise again from fourth. The nature of the rankings is that the winning team takes points of the losing team so a couple of victories of SA or NZ will see us rise dramatically.
I feel quite comfortable that after such an ordinary 2005 that we are still ranked as the fourth best nation in the world.

IRB World Rankings
(as at Monday 20 March 2006)

Rank Country
1 New Zealand
2 South Africa
3 France
4 Australia
5 (6) Ireland
6 (5) England
7 Wales
8 Scotland
9 Argentina
10 Samoa
11 (12) Fiji
12 (11) Italy
13 (15) Romania
14 (13) USA
15 (14) Canada
16 Uruguay
17 Japan
18 Georgia
19 Portugal
20 Tonga
21 Morocco
22 Korea
23 Chile
24 Russia
25 Czech Republic

disappointing but expected

good to see the Irish on their way up though

Interesting that we'll be taking on both the Irish and English first up. France will be the only top team we're not playing in the June tests. It'll be interesting to see where we end up after the June tests, but you don't score as highly for home wins if I recall.