The World Rugby official rankings for the men’s international game made interesting reading when they were updated on Monday. There in sixth place was Australia, who had shot up from ninth. Plummeting down the rankings in a direct swap was Scotland, sixth last week and now ninth.
The rankings sometimes have a false look about them, and that is shown by the fact that New Zealand are currently in fourth when really they should never be out of the top two, and Ireland are out in front at the top of the rankings with France in second and world champions South Africa in third. But that is the beauty of the rankings – they ignore reputations and go strictly on results especially of games played between top tier teams. The point is that there is such a small margin between Australia in sixth and Scotland in ninth – less than two ranking points – that any matches between teams in that bracket will automatically change positions, though I do think that for Scotland to be so harshly penalised for losing to the Wallabies by the odd point in 31 is a tad unfair.
