World Cup to use rankings

THE IRB world rankings will for the first time be used to seed teams at the 2011 rugby World Cup in New Zealand.

The rankings system, which has been in place since 2003, will be used for the pool allocation draw, which will be conducted in December, to seed the 12 automatic qualifiers from last year’s showpiece event in France.

The new system replaces the previous seeding process, which was determined by performances at past World Cups.