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.

The cut-off date, at which point the rankings will be used, will be December 1 this year and Rugby World Cup Ltd (RWCL) chairman Syd Millar said he hoped the move would help create closer matches in the initial stages of the World Cup when blow-out scores have been commonplace.

“In an innovative move, the IRB world rankings will be used to seed the 12 automatic qualifiers from RWC 2007 in France into a draw for the four pools for RWC 2011,” he said.

“The rankings are now very well established and provide us with a credible and succinct way of seeding teams for the World Cup pool draw.

“The RWCL board felt that the rankings are a more accurate record of a team’s position at any given time and will provide the best possible chance of evenly matched pools.”

“Ideally we would have liked to have the draw in 2009 but this would not allow enough time to negotiate and confirm venues for the 48 matches and the associated team base camps,” he said.