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Injustice

Wales drop two places in latest rugby world ranking

Warren Gatland’s side were one of the highlights of the World Cup, but the most recent ranking sees them drop below both Ireland and Argentina.

THE IRB’S RUGBY world ranking has a habit of producing statistical anomalies, but this morning’s revelation, that Wales had dropped two places over the course of the Rugby World Cup, must surely rank among the most incredible.

Warren Gatland’s side produced a series of commanding displays during the tournament, suffering a narrow defeat to South Africa in the tournament’s group stages before beating Ireland convincingly in the quarter-finals.

Those performances notwithstanding, Wales are judged to have lost ground to both Ireland and Argentina, who looked a shadow of the Puma side that reached the semi-finals of the 2007 competition, and fallen to eighth place, four ranking points above Tonga and Scotland.

The infrequency of international fixtures and the inability to quantify the quality of a performance militate against a more “honest” ranking, obviously, but this latest development remains an unsettling one.

The top ten reads as follows:

1. New Zealand 91.43

2. Australia 87.42

3. France 84.70

4. South Africa 84.34

5. England 81.58

6. Ireland 80.65

7. Argentina 80.28

8. Wales 80.18

9. Tonga 76.63

10. Scotland 76.20

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