New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and France are guaranteed the top four places in the IRB Rankings for the 2015 Rugby World Cup draw on 3 December.
Following the conclusion of the six matches involving the 12 seeded teams for the RWC 2015 Pool Allocation Draw, the top four seeds for were confirmed by the IRB. The ratings gap between the top four ranked teams as of Monday, 26 November, will be too high for results of England v New Zealand and Wales v Australia on Saturday to affect their position.
The IRB World Rankings are being used to rank the 12 directly qualified teams for RWC 2015 into three bands for the draw, with the sides ranked one to four in band one – and crucially avoiding each other until the knockout stages – those five to eight in band two and the remaining four in band three.
England and Ireland are confirmed as being in the second band of seeds (fifth to eighth). If Wales avoid defeat against Australia, then they will join Samoa in taking the other two spots in Tier 2. However, if Australia defeat Wales, then Samoa and Argentina will fill the final two places in Tier 2, with Wales joining Italy, Tonga and Scotland in Tier 3.
IRB World Rankings
(Official rankings will be published at 12 midday UK time on Monday 26 November, on irb.com)
1 NEW ZEALAND – 92.91
2 SOUTH AFRICA – 86.94
3 AUSTRALIA – 86.31
4 FRANCE – 85.07
5 ENGLAND – 81.07
6 IRELAND – 80.22
7 WALES – 78.95
8 SAMOA – 78.71 (78.709236088306938 to 15 decimal places)
9 ARGENTINA – 78.71 (78.708853582562098 to 15 decimal places)
10 ITALY – 76.24
11 TONGA – 76.10
12 SCOTLAND – 75.83
The results for the six matches for the 12 seeded teams for RWC 2015 over the weekend were:
Ireland 46-24 Argentina
England 15-16 South Africa
Italy 19-22 Australia
Scotland 15-21 Tonga
France 22-14 Samoa
Wales 10-33 New Zealand
You can follow the RWC 2015 Pool Allocation draw live on rugbyworldcup.com from 3.00pm GMT on 3 December.
